Wait, what “democratically elected government in Gaza”?
This one.
From your own link:
Not sure it counts as being “democratically elected” if the unelected occupying power then takes it upon itself to remove or DQ a large chunk of the elected officials at its own whim and pleasure. (And that’s not counting the sanctions imposed upon the Hamas government as a whole.)
As I’ve noted, “Palestine” from the warmongers’ perspective is a kind of “Schrodinger’s state”. When Israel wants to take actions like permitting Israeli settlements or forbidding Palestinian housebuilding in the territories, then they can do it because they control the region and there’s no Palestinian state or sovereignty. When Israel wants to inflict collective punishment on Palestinians via ongoing war and genocide, then they can do it because it’s suddenly an “enemy state” whose government the Palestinians themselves are totally responsible for.
A government whose last election was 20 years ago is not a democratically-elected government.
This.
On a semi-related note, I find it weird when people say that the citizens of Gaza should have kicked Hamas out themselves. Like how? A couple-few years ago the police raided my upstairs neighbor because of the suspicion that narcotics were being stored there. Now if I, a civilian with no particular special powers beyond a loud voice, had suspected these neighbors were drug dealers and I wanted them to leave, what would my options have been? They have weapons (well, allegedly anyway, I’m sure the whole thing was a big misunderstanding) and I don’t. So I could ask nicely, take my chances and ask rudely or I could call the authorities, who may or may not be willing to get involved. Do any of those options manifest into a good result for me? Probably not, so I am probably not willing to get involved if I know what is good for me. However, I didn’t need to make that decision because I didn’t even know I was in the adjoining property to these folks until the police raid occurred.
Now imagine those folks are Hamas, have AK-47s and a casual willingness to use them and you don’t have a police department to call on to register your complaint (or said police would simply forward your complaint directly to your neighbors). Good luck displacing them. You’d need an organization similar to Los Pepes in Colombia, the resistance group that got rid of Pablo Escobar. But they were worse and did a lot more damage to Colombia in the long run.
Now let’s think about Hamas for a second. Israel had two good, solid years of unlimited warfare and has reserved the right to continue killing folks in Gaza ever since the ceasefire. The IDF had tanks, APCs, fighter-bombers, drones, Special Forces, artillery, snipers, a professional army (and note for any who do not like the IDF, when I say “professional army” in this context I just mean the opposite of a disorganized militia; it is not meant as an endorsement of the IDF or their tactics) and the money and backing of Israel and the United States. The people of Gaza don’t have any of that shit. So what would they do to reclaim their power? How do you get rid of Hamas without replacing it with a worse version of the same thing?
I think you have put way more rational thought and analytic effort into that one post than most of the warmongers have put into this whole situation since October 2023.
Its the same mindset that the Iranian people are just going to rise up and throw off the yoke of the ayatolla and the revolutionary guard.
Slightly off topic (but hey it’s a long thread)
But does anyone know a good place to get up to speed on the destiny vs professor dave vs pangburn back and forth on gaza? I’m getting people that tell me that professor dave has been “exposed” but that just link hours and hours of pangburn waffle.
I’m a fan of all 3 content creators, so it’s a bit of a shame to see them on opposite sides of such an important issue.
More hateful bigotry from Wes here:
Do bigots like this recognize their hatefulness? Or are they blind to it?
As far as most of them are concerned they aren’t hateful, they are Right and the rest of us just too blind to see the Truth.
That might be an accurate description of Hamas… but Hamas is not Palestine.
… Anything, Babs? I looked at your posts for the past few months and didn’t see anything. Is it really that hard to admit you were wrong?
Totally blind, like his avatar Seymour “It’s [everyone else] who are wrong” Skinner. It has got to be frustrating, because being so blind necessarily leaves such bigots feeling like absolute miserable fucks, seeing (or rather not!) as how they are so thoroughly loathed by “everyone else” and yet due to their blindness they haven’t the slightest intuition as to why.
Just because we’re using up all of our munitions and willing to give Iran billions of dollars and Iran now knows the control of the Strait is a strong negotiating chip doesn’t mean we screwed up there. If it was such a bad idea, you wouldn’t see our allies rushing to our aid! C’mon, give him a break.
We are NOT using up all of our munitions, it’s Biden’s fault we have low stocks, and if we find out who leaked that information they should be in prison. 
OK, well, at least the president isn’t cowering in a food cart because Iran knew his travel schedule.
And to be clear, though it might be tempting for some to see this as a genuine Biden problem, the reality is this is a longstanding with how the US prepares for and wages war, well known to naval officers at least (the circles I have been in, anyway). The war in Iraq, for example, benefitted from (1) more than a decade of ongoing suppression of air defense and offensive capabilities, basically ongoing since the Gulf War ended, meaning that (2) by the time the IraqWar started, there was a relatively manageable list of targets that could be knocked out in a matter of days without depleting our stockpiles, and (3) a full-on invasion that, for all its faults, conclusively ended Iraq’s ability to rearm advanced munitions of the sort that could hit our own bases or ships in the region.
But of course Trump and his enablers seem to have just assumed that a few days of strikes would naturally eliminate Iran’s will to right, and never considered such minor nuisances as logistics. Because as the saying goes, amateurs discuss tactics, but red-blooded, god-fearing, flag-lovin’ American heroes just say “Fuck logistics, we’ll do it live!”
All that to say, while it’s true that Trump only had what the Biden Administration left him, what the Biden Administration left him was likewise basically what the Trump administration left him and so on going back probably a couple decades. The decision to try and wage war with such resources was, of course, Trump’s decision.
You guys see this yet? Yikes.
Warmongering is killing our military and our reputation, in addition to all the lives lost.
Great job, warmongers. Fuck you. @Babale, @Wesley_Clark, you should feel absolutely ashamed for your stupidity.