Is there supposed to be a big gotcha here? I don’t know how much more clear I can be.
My apologies, I just continually get surprised by people who are openly in favor of starving and killing children. I can’t seem to get used to the fact that many folks are okay with that, or in your case are even in favor of it.
If it helps I am 100% against the Palestinian genocide of the jews.
Moderating:
It’s been less than 20 minutes since I noted the thread to avoid personal attacks. And if anything it’s gotten worse. @DigitalC, you have stated clearly your support for Israel, but again, as I just mentioned, the OP specifies what is required for more support for Gazan civilians than to end the conflict or to protect Israel. I understand you likely feel under personal attack (see the first line of this post) but you’re coming very close to a willful hijack and threadshit.
I am not issuing any warnings to the posters of the thread, but if this continues, they are the unavoidable next step. If you want to make direct attacks, or accuse your fellow posters of abhorrent behavior/attitudes, we have many Pit threads on multiple stages of the war in Gaza.
I will reopen the thread shortly, giving a moment for tempers to cool.
This topic was automatically opened after 8 minutes.
Here are some quotes from Hamas’s charter. (This is their founding document, comparable to the American Declaration of Independence and Constitution.)
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“Israel will rise and will remain until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors.”
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" Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah’s promise whatever time it might take.
The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry:0 Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!"
for comparison, let’s look at American history, 1860’s. The constitutions of the southern states in the Confederacy specifically stated that blacks should be slaves. Virtually the entire civilian population of the South supported slavery. The constitution stated the social values of their society.
Similarly today in Gaza. Their constitution represents the social values of their society.
cite: the Hamas charter translated to English.
https://irp.fas.org/world/para/docs/880818.htm
Hamas is not the same as Gaza or all Gazans.
It’s ridiculous how often this needs to be repeated. Killing Hamas is fine. Killing Gazan babies is not.
Where are these Gazans who are not the same as Hamas?
Have any citizens of Gaza stood up and said “let’s try a new leadership, Hamas does not represent us” ?
Is there even a Facebook page in Arabic for Gazans to complain about how much they hate Hamas?
Is there a single leader among the Gazans who has the courage to oppose Hamas?
for comparison:
When America began threatening to topple Saddam Hussein, (evenbefore the actual shooting started)there were Iraqi leaders in exile who claimed that they were the true Iraqis, and would be the new leadership, for a new era. They stood up, and got invited to the White House to try to boost their status.
Are there any such leaders among the Gazans?.
War is hell, and , yes, collateral damage happens (i.e. dead babies). If you don’t want any babies to die, don’t start a war by attempting genocide of tens of thousands of innocent Israelis, including babies.
(actual fatalities on Oct7 were “only” a few thousand, but the intent of the genocidal murderers was to kill tens of thousnads.
I’m just waiting for the Israel supporters who swore they would absolutely speak against others who conflate Gazans and Hamas to step in.
There’s a reason you linked this one and not the revised version that came out in the last decade, which is conveniently included IN YOUR CITE. What is it?
the Ku Klux Klan has also revised its language recently. They have learned a bit of realpolitik.
They no longer speak of lynching blacks, they just claim they want full equality for whites…what could be wrong with that? Lets all agree that the KKK is a great organization.
Cite?
Do we get to murder all white people because the KKK still exists?
This is all you needed to say. You believe Gazans are evil, every last one of them. Even the babies are Hamas, apparently.
I disagree. Israel is sowing the seeds of its own alienation. Millions of American Jews like me now see the Israeli government as no better than Hamas - worse, perhaps, because unlike Hamas, they actually have the means to commit genocide. The bipartisan consensus of friendship with Israel is over. That the genocide is much slower than it could otherwise be doesn’t make it okay. It’s still mass starvation and mass murder of civilians. And all for nothing except Netanyahu’s political desires, and the genocidal desires of his allies.
I’m pro-Israel but hesitate to get into an argument with people who cannot see the difference between Israel and Hamas. Right or wrong, I have no common ground with them.
So, even if a bit unfair, I’m am going to challenge you instead.
Civilians never deserve to be killed in war. Their death is always tragic regardless of what their political views may be. Being in favor of pushing all the Jews of Israel into the sea is not something you should be punished for in a just world – you only deserve punishment if you try to do it. The average civilian Hamas supporter in Gaza is no more deserving of being killed than a American demonstrator shouting Globalize the Infartida – that is – NOT AT ALL. Similarly, the civilians killed in bombing of German industrial cities were innocent, regardless of who they had voted for.
Which side is to blame for civilian deaths in Gaza is a real question, but the innocence of civilians should not be.
HAVING SAID THAT, there most certainly are Gazans who have stood up and effectively said let’s try a new leadership, Hamas does not represent us.
New York Times, March 2025:
Gazans Protest Against Hamas and War for a Second Day
Pro-Israel? I believe not. Other news stories say Israeli efforts to obtain military support from these people has been unsuccessful. But there are lots of nonviolent Gazans who want new leadership which does not launch rockets and militant attacks against Israel.
…it isn’t a “buzzword.”
I went to considerable effort posting and sharing the legal case for genocide in this thread and others. There is a case currently going through the International Court of Justice. There are hundreds of pages of evidence. The ICJ ordered provisional measures against Israel in order to prevent genocide.
This is all very well documented. Do you think the International Court of Justice were wrong to issue those interim measures? If so, then please make your case.
In addition to the case currently going through the ICJ, the Prime Minister of Israel has an arrest warrant out for him from the International Court of Justice for " for the war crimes of starvation as a method of warfare and of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts." Do you think they issued that warrant in error?
I’ve cited Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, The UN Special Office, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, along with multiple independent genocide scholars. Do you know what they all have in common?
They all agree it is genocide. That’s based on the legal definition of genocide along with the evidence on the ground.
This would be called ethnic cleansing.
Before October the 7th Israel were holding thousands of Palestinian prisoners, many for absolutely no reason at all: no charge, they wern’t even told why. Its something that has been going on for decades. Its called administrative detention. But they are effectively “hostages”. It includes women and children. Currently, Israel are detaining 300 children.
\What is your source of this definition? Because this isn’t the legal definition (I’ve cited that). “Systematic” isn’t part of the legal definition. And “killing” is only one of five acts of genocide that can be considered.
Cite please. In specific related to this particular conflict.
That isn’t the conclusion of the multiple different organisations that have concluded that this is a genocide. And they’ve provided a metric shit-ton of evidence to support those conclusions.
The reason why Bosnia was cited is because you claimed “body counts don’t make a genocide.” But body counts don’t make a genocide. “Systematic” isn’t part of the definition. Neither are body counts. What is required is intent to destroy, in whole or in part. What “destroy” meant is elaborated further in the convention.
If body counts mattered: then why is the Bosnian genocide a genocide, but what is happening in Gaza not?
I’ve provided hundreds of pages of evidence in this very thread that show the claim that " a real effort on Israel’s part to limit civilian casualties as much as possible" has zero basis in fact. Its a rather outlandish claim considering Israel deliberately engineered a famine.
Nobody in this thread wants this.
Genocide is a crime against humanity. We’ve collectively agreed as a society that genocide is bad, no matter who is doing it. Destroying a people because of who they are is wrong. And we, collectively as a society, have codified this in what we call the genocide conventions.
Hamas committed a terrorist act on October the 7th. It was an atrocity. A warcrime. They should be held accountable.
But it wasn’t “genocide.” It wasn’t “genocide done badly.” It wasn’t attempted genocide. The word has meaning.
It was a terrorist act from a terrorist organisation. And the response from Israel is to destroy the Palestinian people. We as a society can’t allow that to happen.
They aren’t my ally. And “winning” doesn’t have to involve the destruction of an entire people.
Its called humanity. I don’t look at the Palestinian people as a monolith. I look at the brutally mangled bodies of children that I see every single day as a damming indictment on who many of us have become. Hind Rajab was killed by over 300 bullets. She was surrounded by dead family members. Her last words forever memorialised.
I just don’t understand how people can defend this. Over the last couple of years, I’ve seen parents scooping up the remains of their children in rubbish bags. There was nothing left of them except entrails. This is happening every week. There are thousands of dead bodies still buried under the rubble that aren’t included in the casualty count. Bodies being eaten by cats and dogs. No matter how bad the numbers look now: they are a significant undercount.
There were no attacks during the last ceasefire, and multiple hostages were released. Palestinians were being fed. Aid was flowing.
Then Israel broke the ceasefire killing over 400 people in a day and imposed a near total siege for month that resulted in the famine we are seeing today.
I prefer the ceasefire.
I’ve provided hundreds of pages of evidence and linked to several organisations that have concluded that what Israel is doing in Gaza is a genocide. The bar isn’t " ridiculously low." Its the opposite. What Israel is doing is so obviously genocide that the International Court of Justice ordered provisional measures to prevent genocide way back in 2024. Since then Israel have escalated.
Have you actually read any of the evidence? I suggest you start with the South African case: it goes through each element of the genocide convention. It makes legal arguments.
Then look at the latest report from the UN that argues Israel are committing four-out-of-five acts of genocide.
From the revised charter:
" Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine."
Not everything is comparable to the American Declaration of Independence and Constitution. That isn’t how it works around the rest of the world. It’s a subject for another thread: but how Americans view the constitution as some sort of a “sacred tome” is uniquely American, and that isn’t how the rest of us tend to do it.
Hamas don’t need a constitutional amendment to change its charter. It just changes it.
So if your argument is that the Hamas Charter (not the constitution) represents the social values of their society (something I don’t buy, but for the purposes of debate I will entertain) then Palestinians have no quibble with Jewish people. Just with the “Zionist project” that is (according to the International Court of Justice) illegally occupying their lands.
So I don’t see where Wesley’s statement comes from, then. Because it certainly isn’t from the charter.
I find it very easy to condemn and protest Hamas… from my home in Canada. If I were a Gazan, I just would not do so.
What’s further I’m quite certain nobody here would have the guts to do so too. The possibility of violent reprisals is one thing, but I have doubts anyone here could withstand the community isolation and shunning either.
Or perhaps you could. You are hard af, mofos who eat iron and spit lead. I dunno. I know I’m not made of that stuff.
It doesn’t matter what YOU want, helping Palestine is helping them in their genocide. And if what Israel is doing is considered genocide but wanting to kill all the jews is not then its a pointless word.
…,what genocide are you talking about?
Palestine is the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. What genocide are they committing?
Who wants to “kill all jews?”
Feeding starving people is not remotely assisting genocide.
Gazans are humans like anyone else, and deserve life and dignity and opportunity like anyone else. That there are bad Gazans does not condemn all Gazans. They’re just people.
You might want to reflect on the difference between “doing” and “wanting”.