"The poll is inspired by President Biden's statement about the funding request for military aid to Ukraine and Israel he sent to Congress a few weeks ago. He draws parallels between the two conflicts and the two actors."
A lot of people said that they'd feel better with an equivalence using "Hamas" instead of "Palestine".
I disagree; Hamas is not a territory nor a population. It's a political and military organization. It just isn't parallel with other elements in the comparison.
@evan We said we were fighting the Taliban, not the Afghanistans. We say we are fighting ISIS. Neither of those two are countries or territories. Hamas, like the other two, is a terrorist organization.
@evan Hamas is not a territory, but there is a parallel in how the disputed territories are considered by the antagonists… Putin sees Ukraine as part of “greater Russia” - land that once belonged to the Russian empire and cannot be independent. Not just Palestinians, but much of the Muslim world sees Israel as “dar al-harb” - Muslim territory that must not be governed by Jews. And so you have surrounding Muslim countries (notably Iran and Qatar) funding Hamas.
@evan
It can be dangerous to try to reduce one conflict to another. Both have complicated histories, but that doesn't mean that each is an allegory for the other.
@mjc I agree. It probably only makes sense if you're making a speech asking for billions of dollars in military aid, and you want to frame both conflicts as examples of a greater pattern.
@evan i mean, israel's intention is clearly the complete destruction of palestine, no? like ignoring the shit we can all see happening is some birdbrained behavior imo
@evan there's no ordering of the 4 country entities you list that makes the relationships analogous or similar. And trying to do so simplifies the situation beyond anything recognizable or useful.
@evan I understand what you're getting at, and I know you to be an honest, good-faith person in this kind of thing, but we live in a context, and too many people have ruined this type of thought experiment. This isn't far from the bad-faith “oh hey, I'm just asking questions” BS we have seen for years online. Again, I know you to be a good-faith actor in this context, but a lot of people can't or won’t make that assumption.
@mikelbyl thanks, and I appreciate the assumption of goodwill!
I don't usually explain my polls until after I'm done, but in this case I feel like I probably should.
The poll is inspired by President Biden's statement about the funding request for military aid to Ukraine and Israel he sent to Congress a few weeks ago. He draws parallels between the two conflicts and the two actors.
@evan I don't think in "A : B :: B : A", so this is very difficult to answer due to the dynamicity of imbalances of power and the self-perceived authority of the parties involved.
For example, "the relationship of parent to child is not akin to the relationship of child to parent".
@evan It's possible that Hamas wants to wipe out Israel, just as Putin wants to wipe out Ukraine, and we have evidence that this is the case.
One important difference is the power dynamics. Russia is a nuclear power and Ukraine is not. Israel is a nuclear power and Hamas is not. There is no realistic scenario where Hamas has the ability to destroy Israel, but the Israeli gov't & military seem intent on wiping out Palestine.
And please let us remember to distinguish the gov't from the people.
For one thing, if Hamas means to kill all Jewish people around the world and destroy Israel, isn't it strange that Benjamin Netanyahu has supported them?
In 2019, Benjamin Netanyahu said at a meeting of his Likud party: "Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."
@jamesmarshall I'm not saying that's not Hamas's position, I just have trouble understanding the thought process of a Jewish person transferring money to someone who wants to kill all Jewish people, and of a government leader funding people who wish to destroy his government.
@skyfaller once he's out of office, Netanyahu will have to face pretty strong charges of corruption and very likely prison. He will hang on to his power however he can. I doubt he cares about anyone but himself, including Israeli citizens. If peace happened, he would become irrelevant, so he and hamas have both sabotaged the peace process. You can read about hamas' charter, which is explicitly genocidal. You can also see what their spokesmen have said recently, that they will keep attacking until Israel is gone.
@evan I simply mean that Russia attempting to destroy Ukraine doesn't mean that all Russians want to kill or absorb Ukrainians, for example.
I feel this is especially important in the case of Palestine, where it does not seem entirely correct to say that Palestine invaded Israel and murdered and kidnapped people.
@evan Ukraine, Israel, USA are allies while Russia, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah are allies. So in a sense there is truth to this comparison but I would be cautious about equating Hamas to Palestine.
@evan I would mostly agree with Ukraine:Russia::Israel:Hamas, but I disagree with Ukraine:Russia::Israel:Palestine.
Ukraine and Russia were at peace in 2000; they had mutually agreed borders. OTOH the Palestinians have obvious and legitimate grievances (though since 1948 the response of their leaders and neighbouring countries to those grievances has mostly made matters worse for them). Even after the destruction of Hamas, there will be no peace for Palestinians and Israelis to return to, alas.
@mpjgregoire
I’m sorry, but Israel is not waging a war against Hamas. Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians. Hamas was not there 75 years ago, Hamas is a consequence of the brutality and savagery of the Israelis against the Palestinians. Moreover, Hamas is not present in the West Bank so why are there Israeli settlers expelling and massacring Palestinians from this region? @evan
@evan how many people voting are actual living war survivors? I find I vote very differently than folks who have never lived through huge violent wars.
@evan I think they're fundamentally different: I see Ukraine vs. Russia as purely one-sided, while I see Hamas vs. Israel as more complex, nuanced, and ultimately two-sided.
@jamesmarshall @evan
The Israeli-Palestinian "conflict" is not complex or complicated. It is very simple in fact; there is a nuclear and colonial power with the support of the West committing genocide against the Palestinians. On the other hand you have the Russian-Ukraine conflict that began in 2014, when Europe supported a coup d'état against a democratically elected president and let the Ukrainian army massacre the ethnically Russian population of Ukraine.
@tortoarado@evan your characterization of the conflict in Ukraine and its history is false, according to the Ukrainians, Russians, and ethnically Russian Ukrainians I know.
Regarding Israel and Palestine: No, it is not simple, and everyone who says it's one-sided is making the situation worse. Do you realize that hamas' publicly stated goal is to exterminate Jews worldwide? How would you act if they wanted to exterminate you and your whole family? There is no justification for killing innocent civilians, on either side.
Regarding Israel's "colonialism": Both Jews and Palestinians are indigenous there, and each has just as much of a right to be there as the other. It was handled badly by the British in 1948, and I understand resentment over that, but it doesn't excuse any genocide today, 75 years later.
I don't think peace is possible there until both Netanyahu and hamas are out of power. Both rely on the conflict for their existence, and both have actively sabotaged the peace process.
@jamesmarshall
Who caused the Odessa massacre in 2014? The Ukrainian army never bombed the Donbass? Who destroyed any chance of peace between Ukraine and Russia? Who destroyed the Nord Stream pipeline and refuses any independent investigation? Why is what I said wrong? We have to be really desillusional to believe that Europe and the United States do not have a responsibility in the provocation and continuation of the war in Ukraine.
@jamesmarshall
And one must also be very hypocritical to say that the genocide of the Palestinians by Israel is a "complicated" affair. For all those who have suffered the atrocities of the United States, Israel and the West in general, the answer is very clear: Israel is an apartheid state and is committing genocide. Israel was founded on the massacre and forced displacement of the Palestinians.
@jamesmarshall
This traumatic event is forever remembered by Palestinians as the Nakba. If there was a chance for Israelis and Palestinians to live together, Israel destroyed it forever. The only one responsible for this situation is Israel and not Hamas. Hamas did not exist 75 years ago and Hamas does not exist in the West Bank so explain to me why in both cases the Israeli settlers attacked the Palestinians?
@jamesmarshall
In fact, because of the settlers' attacks on the Palestinians in the West Bank, Hamas gained popularity in this region.
N.B.: We must not forget that the "only democracy in the Middle East" played a key role in the arming and training of death squads during the Latin-American dictatorships and so far it trains and supplies weapons to the police facilitating the brutal repression of all those who fight for a dignified life Latin America.
🧵 @evan
@tortoarado none of your sources contradict anything I said. Your original claim was that the Israel-hamas war is simple and there's only one side to it. I say that both sides contribute to it. Both governments (not their peoples) are genocidal in intent.
You seem to be ignoring everything I followed up with, and sticking to your original (propagandist and simplistic) narrative that it's all Israel's fault. I could respond to every one of your comments, but you don't seem to be arguing in good faith. If you're not willing to actually listen and respond to what I say, and reconsider your position if you learn anything new, then it's not a rational discussion. (And yes, I do this myself, and have learned some new things in the past 4 weeks. Also, I argue the same thing to people on the other side who think it's all hamas' fault.)
@jamesmarshall
Give me the actual document that says Hamas wants to genocidate all the Jews. Yes, give me the sources that prove that Hamas wants to kill all the Jews.
However, you will easily find documents that prove that the Israeli government wants to genocidate and forcibly displace the 2 million Gazans in the Sinai desert.
And it shows that you read none of the articles I sent you because you would know that Hamas is closer to a guerrilla than a terrorist organization. All the Global South is wrong except you who knows everything and does not need to open a history book to know the history of Palestine. Even the founding fathers themselves say that Israel is a colonial project in the image of Rhodesia.
@tortoarado I seldom use the word "terrorist" because it's not well-defined, and it's meant to cause outrage rather than enlighten. But by any definition of the word, hamas' attack on innocent Israelis on October 7 was terrorism.
Not all of the global South agrees with you, and I never said I knew everything. All I said is it's not one-sided. Your words prove again that you're not arguing in good faith, and are more interested in insults than in learning anything.
I have no idea who you are, where you're from, or why you claim to be an expert. I have been following the situation there for about 20 years, and I've been to Palestine and have discussed a lot of this with Palestinians there. I've also worked in human rights for over 20 years, and know people all over the region.
To say that the deaths of Israeli settlers are only due to Hamas is a huge lie. Israel has a very large share of responsibility in what happened on October 7, 2023.
As I speak, Israel has killed nearly 10,000 Palestinians, the majority of whom are women and children. It has been proven that Israeli bombing targets hospitals, houses of journalists and doctors, ambulances and schools. Thousands of Palestinians, including hundreds of children, are in Israeli prisons without trial... It is no longer self-defence, it is genocide.
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