What about people that are currently being detained like Hussam Abu Safia?
For starters: why is he being detained? Why was he held in solitary confinement? Why was he beaten with an electric stick? Why hasn’t the Red Cross been given access to him, and why is his access to a lawyer so limited?
When are they going to release him? What exactly did he do wrong?
And if they are doing this to him, and there are thousands of Palestinians being held in custody right now, all of them being mistreated, some in much worse ways, many, if not most quite possible being innocent, then how are they going to treat those actual “Hamas fighters”?
I don’t think the actions of the Israeli government, both in deed or by words, show this to be correct at all. They’ve literally said they will step down from power, but this isn’t enough.
So the thousands of Palestinians in custody right now are just going to be let go? Can we have that in writing?
So Israel are just going to let them go free? They won’t kill them with pager bombs? Targeted strikes that kill them and their families? Thats it? They are free?
It’s redefining what “ceasing to exist as a politically viable force” means. It means that the government of Israel and the IDF are so incompetent that the near total destruction of Gaza hasn’t resulted in Hamas ceasing to exist as a “politically viable force”. What a totally inept strategic failure.
A single Hamas fighter, somewhere, would be enough for Netanyahu (and his useful idiots online who blindly support whatever comes out of the Israeli government) to claim that the fight must continue. The monsters in charge of Israel and the IDF are no more honest or trustworthy than Trump or even Hamas.
I’m not seeing this reality. This sounds like a very one-sided version of it in fact.
One nuance that is missing is something that often happens in so many conflicts; The notion of “the enemy” expands during a war, until it encompasses a vast, vast number of people. When a bystander or citizen or aid worker or ambulance driver or doctor or journalist or child is killed, it’s hard for a country to admit that they just killed an innocent. Much, much easier to fall back on “well, they were the enemy”. And stories are confabulated to ensure that the public sees them as the enemy.
This is IMO, human nature. We don’t want to see ourselves as “the baddies” so we must ensure that those we have killed were terrible, terrible people. This, I believe is what we’re seeing now.
So getting rid of Hamas is getting frighteningly close to getting rid of the entire population of Gaza. One way or another.
History repeats itself frequently, and sometimes the sides are reversed.
They are clearly a criminal element. But the Israelis’ are responding like they are an army, which they are not. Unless perhaps you can describe the weaponry in parity with Israel in their line of battle.
If the US responded to the mafia like Israel in Gaza we would demolish Forest Hill Ill.
The UNRWA is going to ensure Hamas is disbanded? Because my response was to your idea that it’s impossible to remove them as the political power in Gaza.
…I’ve looked this up and I’m seeing claims from Israel about “smuggling arms in ambulances” from 2003. Is that what you were talking about?
This is such a super-specific sentence, you are obviously referring to something in particular. Not that it matters, because it doesn’t justify what Israel is doing to Gaza, and if you want to complain about “what is being taught in schools”, then wait till you see what is being taught to Israeli children. From 2011:
As UNRWA said in response to this accusation, they didn’t have access to their HQ at the time this was alleged to have happened. They have asked Israeli authorities for more information so they can investigate: as you’ve been told over and over again, Israel has refused.
Of course not. This isn’t their mandate.
I haven’t argued it’s impossible to remove Hamas from political power in Gaza. I’ve argued that Hamas has agreed to give up political power in Gaza. This has nothing to do with UNRWA.
The simplest and most obvious evidence that Israel is overseeing ongoing atrocities in Gaza, including mass starvation, is their continuing refusal to allow journalists into Gaza. If there truly were nothing terrible to see with regards to IDF and Israeli actions in Gaza, they’d be clamoring for thousands of international journalists to come into Gaza, and take great pains to ensure their safety.
That they’re doing the opposite confirms as much as anything that they’re overseeing absolutely terrible things.
Well, no. We burned their cities and killed their soldiers until a few guys called up and said they wanted to surrender. We had to figure out which one could sign. There were no political acts. And there are still lots of Nazis around.
Germany surrendered because they were utterly defeated. And no, there are not still a lot of Nazis around in their political structure. The German constitution makes it illegal to disseminate Nazi propaganda and the party is banned.
You will note that I specifically said Nazi Germany was defeated in it’s entirety POLITICALLY.
And to add to that, Hitler never surrendered. he killed himself. Just prior to that the Nazi regime was running around executing civilians and military people in the streets.
Germany was defeated because some of the upper management was gone, but the military, civil service, state governments and corporate economy were intact. When the Russians were battling their way into Berlin people were still standing in line at government food distribution points. No corporation failed as a result of the war. The Weimar Constitution was replaced with a modified version of itself.
From what I see on the news some Nazis are back.
All of the solutions in Gaza are political. The ‘war’ is theater for propaganda purposes. There are no military targets.
I can well believe that there was a case of Hamas using an ambulance to smuggle in weapons.
I can also well believe that after blowing up an ambulance, Israeli officials went “holy shit we just blew up an ambulance! Quick, let’s get in front of this story by talking about how they were probably smuggling weapons.”
And with reference to the first hypothesis, an instance of an ambulance being used to smuggle weapons does NOT therefore logically follow that ALL ambulances are being used in this way, leading to open season on first responders. This would in fact be a war crime.
Likewise, an example of a journalist being a Hamas sympathizer does not mean ALL journalists are now Hamas, and can be killed. It’s simply does not follow. It smells like an excuse to execute all journalists and all first responders.
The claims about UNRWA are essentially articles of faith – those who trust Israeli leaders and the IDF will believe it, others will probably not. And it’s mostly irrelevant anyway – Israel is in control of Gaza, and Israel is choosing to disallow enough food to feed all Gazans. If they didn’t have the capability, they could ask the many international orgs with lots of experience with this, but they very conspicuously are not asking for help, even while Gazans starve.
This is why I have lost all sympathy with Israel now.
I had plenty of sympathy for Israel in 2023 going into 2024. I even scoffed at the students who were setting up tent encampments to support Palestinians.
My support and sympathy for Israel’s politicians have now vanished completely and utterly. I feel like those students I ignored were right all along. It is becoming more and more apparent that the Israeli politicians are moving towards complete genocide, and I was a fool for not seeing it earlier.
Israel have been targeting UNRWA for years, in part because they see the agency as an impediment to dealing with the Palestinian people. Get rid of the agency, get rid of the register, get rid of the mandate, and the refugee problem goes away.
Which is why we’ve witnessed this deliberate disinformation campaign. Why countries defunded them (most have resumed). Why UNRWA employees have been targeted: 360 killed so far.
There is no other organisation that can step up and replace this role. And while other agencies are able to step up to provide humanitarian aid in Gaza (although UNRWA have the most experience, people on the ground, and established networks) it’s their role globally in fulfilling its mandate until a just and durable solution to their plight is found that most international observers consider to be the real target.
This shouldn’t be a matter of “faith.” Israel has made numerous claims about the agency. But they’ve failed to support those claims with evidence. So we simply shouldn’t believe them.
It was a pile of rubble in every sense of the word. A single factory in the US alone was making a B-24 every hour. There were more factories and bombers being built in the US in addition to that and there were more countries involved building war machinery. Germany had to recall their submarine fleet because of advances in intel and airborne radar. Germany was incapable of continuing the fight.
There were food lines distributing what was left. There was no incoming food and the Allied forces weren’t trying to feed them. Any corporation that survived the war was because Germany was supported by Allied countries.
I don’t really see how the second option is less futile than the former. “Disbanding”, much like “ceding political power,” is the sort of thing you can say you’re doing, but then not really do it. And I’m not sure how much “disarming” really means for Hamas. It’s not like they’ve got an air force, or a tank division, where there’s a lot of big, expensive, hard-to-replace military assets. It’s mostly small arms and homemade rockets, right? Even if you could be sure they surrendered every single crate of AK-47s, how hard would it be for an outside agent like Iran to just buy them a bunch more crates?
Seems like both options still end up with Gaza in Hamas’ hands, but at least with the first one, you can get the surviving hostages back.
So maybe Israel should have stopped at killing 36 people because it satisfied some kind of quid pro quo?
This is war. This what Hamas wanted and this is what the people who voted them into power chose. It was an attempt to draw Islamic governments into the conflict to fight Israel and it failed. there is no support for Hamas and nobody wants the refugees it has created.
It could end right now if Hamas surrenders all power and a legitimate government is established that is not at war with Israel.
This is total bullshit - it’s not only false propaganda, it’s impossible. Gazans are literally starving to death. Starving people have no power to establish a new government, especially while they suffer daily mass murder and other atrocities at the hands of the IDF.
Nothing at all good can happen until Gazans are no longer starving, and Israel and only Israel has the power to end that.