I agree, obviously. I think when people try to “both sides” this, as it seems, they’re not talking about victims of genocide. Hamas, as the Palestinian leadership in Gaza, have been receiving literal briefcases of money from Israel for years; you can’t call them [the governmental and especially military organization] victims of Israel.
Not being victims doesn’t make them automatically bad. You might argue that armed resistance is necessary to oppose occupation and ethnic cleansing, and that’s a legitimate point. I’d say that Hamas, in this case, being the lesser evil, is still an evil, but it doesn’t only exist to be evil: it exists to fight the bigger evil. Perhaps there’s a not-evil way to fight the occupying power, I don’t know. But what Hamas (& other resistance organizations) have been doing is definitely not working for them. Some might say that it’s backfired massively1.
It depends on how you choose to view this conflict. It can be a conflict of Israel against Palestine (or Israel against Gaza), and in this dichotomic view, the moral option is obviously supporting the Palestinians, Hamas included. But this view doesn’t necessarily represent reality. It can also be a conflict between people who want peace2 between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, and those who don’t, on whichever “side” they happen to be. In this case, it’s imperative to support (actual, not fake) humanitarian foundations in Gaza, and organizations in Israel trying to fight this from within, but oppose escalation in armed conflict. By this view, the conflict is of Israel as a country (a government and military), not a nation, and Hamas as a military, not a representative of the Palestinians, against the Palestinian population3.
My point is that this thread is just arguing over terminology. There is a genocide, we oppose the people facilitating the genocide, and we support the victims. It doesn’t get much more complicated.
Footnotes (yes I used footnotes in a lemmy comment):
1: The one doing the genocide is obviously Israel. Blaming Hamas for bringing this on their own people is disingenuous, but on the other hand, you can’t say that they didn’t know this was going to happen, especially with this Israeli government.
2: Peace is complicated, but for a start we can consider people who oppose genocide, ethnic cleansing, military occupation, and illegal settlements. The optimal solution is the one-state solution, which not everyone accepts, but you work with what you have.
3: There is some effect on the Israeli population, though it’s negligible compared to genocide. Both Israel and Hamas have to maintain some level of support within their respective population, but Israel being way more powerful and the support threshold for Hamas being lower result in a relatively smaller impact on the Israeli population.
I agree, obviously. I think when people try to “both sides” this, as it seems, they’re not talking about victims of genocide. Hamas, as the Palestinian leadership in Gaza, have been receiving literal briefcases of money from Israel for years; you can’t call them [the governmental and especially military organization] victims of Israel.
Not being victims doesn’t make them automatically bad. You might argue that armed resistance is necessary to oppose occupation and ethnic cleansing, and that’s a legitimate point. I’d say that Hamas, in this case, being the lesser evil, is still an evil, but it doesn’t only exist to be evil: it exists to fight the bigger evil. Perhaps there’s a not-evil way to fight the occupying power, I don’t know. But what Hamas (& other resistance organizations) have been doing is definitely not working for them. Some might say that it’s backfired massively1.
It depends on how you choose to view this conflict. It can be a conflict of Israel against Palestine (or Israel against Gaza), and in this dichotomic view, the moral option is obviously supporting the Palestinians, Hamas included. But this view doesn’t necessarily represent reality. It can also be a conflict between people who want peace2 between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, and those who don’t, on whichever “side” they happen to be. In this case, it’s imperative to support (actual, not fake) humanitarian foundations in Gaza, and organizations in Israel trying to fight this from within, but oppose escalation in armed conflict. By this view, the conflict is of Israel as a country (a government and military), not a nation, and Hamas as a military, not a representative of the Palestinians, against the Palestinian population3.
My point is that this thread is just arguing over terminology. There is a genocide, we oppose the people facilitating the genocide, and we support the victims. It doesn’t get much more complicated.
Footnotes (yes I used footnotes in a lemmy comment):
1: The one doing the genocide is obviously Israel. Blaming Hamas for bringing this on their own people is disingenuous, but on the other hand, you can’t say that they didn’t know this was going to happen, especially with this Israeli government.
2: Peace is complicated, but for a start we can consider people who oppose genocide, ethnic cleansing, military occupation, and illegal settlements. The optimal solution is the one-state solution, which not everyone accepts, but you work with what you have.
3: There is some effect on the Israeli population, though it’s negligible compared to genocide. Both Israel and Hamas have to maintain some level of support within their respective population, but Israel being way more powerful and the support threshold for Hamas being lower result in a relatively smaller impact on the Israeli population.