As I acknowledged on the very first page of this thread, repeatedly.
And I have nowhere denied that the Hamas Charter rules out peace. Suggesting that I have done so is very misleading.
This is bizarre. No, it doesn’t. It certainly doesn’t do it expressly, and your argument for how it does it implicitly relies on reading a passage in a way that no Islamic scholar agrees with.
[QUOTE=Richard Parker]
Is it not important that one of the more frequently used talking points about the conflict is false?
[/QUOTE]
Again, even assuming it IS false (which it only is if you parse things a certain way and ignore the subtext of the conflict as well as the intent of the Charter itself), it’s only one talking point, and is used more to underscore or emphasize the threat. No one seriously thinks Hamas will ever be in a position to perpetrate genocide on Jews in Israel (or territory claimed by Palestine), but the fact of the Charter itself makes it clear that Hamas intentions would spell death to many/most/all of the Jews in any territory they ever did gain control of. Until and unless Hamas totally disavows that charter (they have backed away from emphasizing it, but not disavowed it), it’s going to make peace nearly impossible for anyone not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt about what they really meant in the thing.
Yes, but there is a larger context here. You are trying to isolate one aspect of decades of history and then parse it based solely on that (and a direct reading of a translation of a document) without context to all of that history. Of COURSE people think this is all connected and that you have a larger agenda, because it IS all connected and whether YOU have a larger agenda or not, this is the same argument that Hamas apologists have used during discussions on this subject.
Then why are you now stating as a fact “… that Likud similarly rejects any Palestinian state or significant presence west of the Jordan river …”?
I think you are losing it. I have not suggested you denied this. What you said, and I quote, was:
So I explained “what” - namely, that it is highly relevant to the claim you were discussing, namely that Israel was “… failing in pushing hard enough for peace …” that Hamas does not believe in peace.
That’s “what”.
Who, in context, do you think Hamas is referring to when it describes the unrighteous and undeserving as having “… turned you out of your dwellings”? Could it be, perhaps, Unitarians? Or maybe Methodists?
Or just perhaps, could it be the Israelis and Jews, whom the entire rest of the Charter is aimed at? Naw. That is surely a stretch!
I agree. But is anyone really saying that? I imagine they’re really saying that the evidence is cumulative.
Play both sides meaning to waffle back and forth as to whether the focus is on the explicit meaning of the Charter or on the practical ramifications of that, based on whether it benefits your argument at a given point. When I made the point that even if there was some uncertainty, as a practical matter you had to act as though it meant that, because of the risk of being wrong about it, you said well you don’t want to discuss that - you’re only discussing whether the claims of explicit are accurate. But then when someone challenged the point as being “pedantic” you responded that the relevance was for these very practical aspects that you don’t want to discuss.
It is useful. On another topic I asked for a link to the Hamas charter. I read part of it, didn’t see the specifics to genocide but the killing of Jews can certainly be read that was. I assumed that was what everyone was talking about. Certainly their actions do not belie some hidden, noble objective but I didn’t want to read the whole thing so I didn’t challenge it
I’ll admit I don’t read all these debates. But this is the first time I’ve encountered the argument that Hamas is intent on genocide.
As I posted, in my opinion it’s an open question. There are parts of the charter that can be interpreted as a call to genocide. And there are parts of the charter which contradict that. As a practical matter, it’s not going to happen - even if they have the intent (which they may not) Hamas lacks the means to commit genocide.
They’re certainly understood by most Palestinians as being a call for genocide which is the most relevant question.
I have to say this whole thread seems to be rather simplistic and somewhat igorant attempts to try and pretend Hamas’ ultimate goal isn’t to “push the Jews into the Sea”.
I’m sure we’ll now have people explaining the above phrase isn’t an “explicit” call for genocide but merely an “implicit” one.
Anyway, anyone who tries to pretend the document is remotely sane either hasn’t read it or is a complete moron.
[QUOTE=Ibn Warraq]
Anyway, anyone who tries to pretend the document is remotely sane either hasn’t read it or is a complete moron.
[/QUOTE]
I disagree (and this is unnecessarily harsh IMHO). I think someone who doesn’t understand the historical context or some of the subtext and who isn’t a moron can genuinely read it and not get what it’s actually saying.
There NO SUCH THING as a “small issue” in regards to any aspect to the Israel/Palestine conflict. Don’t you know that yet?
You’re correct. My comment was far too harsh and your comment is vastly better.
Not understanding the historical context of the language used by a document certainly doesn’t make one a moron.
That said, people who believe the Jews are responsible for all the worlds wars and created the Freemasons and the rotary clubs to control certainly us Nazi-level anti-Semitic as well as being aggressively in denial of reality.
Beyond that, everybody be honest, if you genuinely believed the above paragraph was correct, would anyone think there’s anything wrong with genocide against the Jews?
I’m not endorsing this methodology, but if you want an example of high-octane paint peeling bigotry, consider the Hutu Ten Commandments, published in the run up to the Rwanda genocide. It is indeed mostly a “reiterations of the iniquities of the target victims,” though it also says, “The Hutu should stop having mercy on the Tutsi.”
I would be comfortable calling that document expressly genocidal. I’m not clear whether Richard Parker would.
I think there is a way in which the explicit vs implicit call of the document is relevant here, which is in Hamas’ attempt to legitimize themselves as an Islamic organization. The Jews’ status as People of the Book complicate the rhetoric a little bit, which is seen in the clumsy way they refer to Jews and Zionists. In general, while it contains even more than the requisite amount of crazy for documents of its type, what it is trying to do is fairly straightforward. (My gold standard for measuring the craziness in Islamist writings is (warning PDF) The America I Have Seen, by Sayyid Qutb, a short but vital read for anyone interested in modern Islamism.)
As such, I agree with your larger point that Hamas’ ideal end-game is clearly spelled out in the document as a whole, and would constitute genocide by any reasonable criteria.
That is interesting. I have never read the “ten commandments”.
I would note that there is less of an explicit call for genocide in the “ten commandments” than there is in the Hamas Charter; as you note, the closest it gets is to say they should “stop having mercy” on the Tutsi, not that they should kill them. Indeed, most of the “ten commandments” assumes that there are going to be Tutsi around - what’s the point of an injunction not to marry Tutsi if they are all dead?
In short, if the Hamas charter isn’t a “call for genocide”, then certainly the “ten commandments” isn’t.
Man, you are putting a lot of energy trying to “prove” that a document that says “Jews all need to be killed and they’re so offensive that even rocks and trees will magically gain voices just to rat them out so they can be exterminated” is somehow not anti-Jew.
This is not a call to drink juice and eat cookies before naptime. This is a call for genocide (and I’m not even going to touch on the idiotic nitpicky “Does it fit this specific nuance of the word “genocide” as related by so-and-so?” arguments because such arguments are simply distractions.)
So what’s your agenda? What point are you ineptly trying to make? That it’s OK to kill Jews? That when they say that all Jews need to be killed isn’t really genocide because…um…?
Why are you contorting your arguments into pretzels to try to deny what the fucking terrorists wrote into their own charter and don’t deny themselves?
Forgive my short absence from this thread. I’ve apparently missed out on answering the calls that I’m an anti-semite or a moron for asking, in the words of my OP, whether the Charter of the “Palestinian terrorist group Hamas” which is “deeply anti-semitic” and “certainly against having any Jewish state in the region” is also, in the words of the Slate author, “explicitly genocidal.”
The overwhelming answer seems to be that it is not, but that shouldn’t be surprising since those who plan to commit genocide tend to be more subtle, and that this doesn’t keep it from being evidence of genocidal intent. Some added that the attempt to split hairs between “evidence of genocidal intent” and “explicitly genocidal” is revealing of some greater nefarious agenda on my part.
Well, fine. When you’re the one in the thread who thinks everyone else is being unreasonable, you’re probably the asshole. So I’ll take that on the chin.
But what I was genuinely questioning was something pretty close to what Ibn Warraq asserts: whether Palestinians generally and Hamas specifically believe that Hamas would, if given the chance, slaughter as many Israeli civilians as it could even if unnecessary to their goal of destroying the State of Israel. I think that’s the general assertion that the Hamas Charter argument is supposed to serve, to rhetorical ends that are a little unclear to me given the obvious never-never-land aspect to that hypothetical. Is it possible to ask that question in good faith without it being implied that I am an anti-semite?
Well, I’ve read the document so I guess I’m a complete moron. But as such, I’m standing by what I said. There are parts of the charter that call for genocide. And there are parts of the document that contradict that.
The OP of this thread already quoted both but here they are again:
In my personal opinion, I’d say most Hamas members and supporters are going to give more weight to the first passage than the second.
But fair’s fair. I won’t say this document “proves” Hamas is calling for genocide when it equally “proves” the opposite.
Nobody has called you an anti-Semite. You were merely asked why you were spending so much time trying to prove that a document that calls on Muslims to slaughter Jews wasn’t genocidal.
I also notice you’ve decided to another poster an “asshole”.
Who is that? Who’s the “asshole”?
I’d say again that the “second passage” is expressly conditional on the Jews (let’s ignore Christians for the moment, as Hamas is clearly aimed at combatting Israel and Jews) not offending against Islam - and the rest of the document very clearly proves that in the opinion of the drafters, Jews of necessity offend against Islam.
It’s a ‘we would be nice, but you make that impossible’ clause, that excupates Hamas from blame for the measures they are forced to take against Jews.
Apparently, this strategy is very successful, as some folks who are not even Hamas symathizers are clearly fooled by it.
You misunderstand him. He’s calling himself an “asshole”, in a rhetorical manner, for being the odd man out in the thread.
Heh.
I was referring to me. I’ll report myself.