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.
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…?
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.