More than 10,000 Palestinians have been killed in the month since Hamas’ terrorist attacks inside southern Israel, the group’s health ministry in Gaza says.

But Hamas officials say the mounting death toll, believed to include thousands of children, has not caused the group to regret its actions in southern Israel, which Israeli officials said killed 1,400 people.

In fact, Hamas leaders say that their goal was to trigger this very response and that they’re still hoping for a bigger war. It’s all part of a strategy, they say, to derail talks over Israel normalizing relations with regional powers — namely, Saudi Arabia — and draw the world’s attention to the Palestinian cause.

Hamas, these officials say, is more interested in the destruction of Israel than what it sees as the temporary hardships faced by Palestinians under Israeli bombardment.

“What could change the equation was a great act, and without a doubt, it was known that the reaction to this great act would be big,” Khalil al-Hayya, a member of the group’s governing politburo, told The New York Times in an interview.

  • ThatFembyWho@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 year ago

    Curious to see how their apologists will spin that.

    Every dead Palestinian Muslim is a martyr to Hamas, no? Every life just another tool to accomplish their religious-political objective, which afaik is solely the destruction of Israel. Or ask yourself why they intentionally link their paramilitary network to schools, hospitals, private residences and such.

    Say whatever you want about Israel and Zionism, Hamas are NOT “the good guys” here and never have been. Their actions are indefensible. No amount of whataboutism changes that…

    • ItsMeSpez@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Unfortunately it is entirely possible for there to be no good guys at all. Take a step back and realize that you can choose not to take a side in every issue.

      • ThatFembyWho@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        Yep that is international relations in a nutshell. The worst expression of which is war, or violent conflict, subjugation, etc.

        IMO as long as we divide the world by race, ethnic groups, tribes, religions - this is what we can expect. I’m a realist, but I would prefer something better…

    • UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      I’ve yet to see anyone defend Hamas’s actions, even from comments that have been reported by others. What people do say is that Hamas’s actions does not excuse Israel’s military committing the atrocities that they are doing. Sounds like you are making up an antagonistic group that aren’t really seen on Lemmy.

      • Marin_Rider@aussie.zone
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        1 year ago

        there are literally comments in this thread and every thread like it defending their actions. anyone who refers to both sides being bad is bombarded with accusations of being pro Israel.

        yes, there are LOTs of people here defending and justifying hamas actions specifically, and there’s always someone saying “noone is justifying hamas” too

        • UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          I scrolled for a bit and didn’t see anyone supporting the terror attacks on this post. Could you link to some examples?

          The closest I found was someone saying what boiled down “what do you expect will happen when people get desperate”

          There is a *big *difference between understanding why people get desperate and radicalised to commit terror attacks, and actually condoning it.

      • ThatFembyWho@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        They refuse to admit that Hamas committed a crime, or has a long history of deliberate terrorist behavior. Rather than saying that, they pivot to Israel/”Zionism" as the ultimate root of evil. I have no problem admitting both sides are at fault, and in fact the IDF response is well out of proportion at this point. But, poke a hornet’s nest, what do you expect.

        How often do you interact with tankies…?

        • UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          How often do you interact with tankies…?

          Outside of dealing with the odd report on our instance, I don’t. I’m not sure what people get out of seeking communities they dislike/don’t care for.

          I’ve muted hexbear and blocked some political leaning “world news” communities, programming.dev also hides political communities unless you specifically subscribe to them so that doesn’t show up for our users in all either.

          Granted, I don’t see every report made on our instance, but from all the reports I’ve seen since Hamas’ terror attack, the worst one was someone wanting Israelis to leave the land and for the colonisers that are actively taking more land to repay the people they took the homes from with forced labour. Other than that one, even simple things like “Free Palestine” has been reported as hate speech. So you really can’t tell what a single person mean when they talk about hate speech or “supporting Hamas” without them elaborating on where they draw the line.

          Of course there are places where people will defend Hamas’ terror attacks. You can also find people who claims Ukraine is ruled by nazis, that 9/11 was justified, covid is a hoax, Holocaust never happened, etc… The question is if you see those opinions popping up on “normal” communities and supported by upvotes.

      • goat@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        There are many people across Lemmy defending Hamas. There’s a few documented at the meanwhileongrad community.

        • UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          If you go looking for them I’m sure you’ll find degenerates (why are looking for them though?), but they are absolutely not common in the all section from what I’ve seen.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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      If you hear run-of-the-mill Gazans when interviewed on TV (well, maybe not in the US because the propaganda over there is insane so I suspect there’s no showing of normal Palestinians up close and personal, as just people, on TV) they’re often saying of those run of the mill people who died (so children, family and acquaintances, not “fighters”) as being “martyrs” and of possibly dying, including themselves, as “becoming martyrs”.

      So yeah, that’s probably a general coping strategy over there for the situation they’re in, which would mean that the occupying power increasing the indiscriminated killing of Palestinian civilians is bound to push them in even greater numbers towards Hamas’ ultra-radical take on how to resist the Occupier.

      Hamas is an Insurrection Movement: whilst the means they used on the 7th are abhorrent, that does not change the fact that their reason to be, structure and purpose are those of an Insurrection Movement in a Territory controlled by an Occupying Power, same as the people fighing with guerrilla warfare tactics the US troops in Iraq and Cohalition troops in Afghanistan.