@dnkboston @QasimRashid

I am not saying that I condone or approve of what Israel is doing -- but it is vitally important to realise this very simple fact:

Israel is doing to Hamas what Hamas wanted, aimed and planned to do to Israel.

Secondly, this was the explicit and specific platform that led the people of Gaza to elect Hamas and put it in charge of Gaza.

I found Hamas' manifesto. I fed it through Google Translate, because I can't read Arabic.

It specifically says that the primary goal of the organisation is to complete the work of the Third Reich and exterminate the Jewish race from the face of the Earth. This is spelled out, emphatically and repeatedly.

(Note: once Hamas realised people were doing this, that their document was readable by kāfirūn -- yes, the word "kaffir" is a transliteration of the Arabic word for non-Muslim non-Arabs -- in 2017 it published a much shorter manifesto which expurgated the material about genocide.)

This conflict is the victims of a nearly-successful genocide fighting back against an organisation that achieved power on a platform of completing that genocide.

@dnkboston @QasimRashid War is hell. It's a long time since WW2 and most Westerners have forgotten.

The Israelis have not.

Hamas has not surrendered. It has not conceded or backed down. It is still holding hostages. It intentionally used the people of Gaza to shield its bases and command structures.

This is an active conflict between one side that has repeatedly said it will not rest until it completes the genocide of the Jews -- one of many such groups, incidentally -- and the only Jewish nation on the planet, which knows very well that its choice is win, or be exterminated.

Every single conflict every Arab power has entered into with Israel, Israel has won.

Knowing this, on 7 Oct 2023 Hamas started a new one.

It chose this conflict.

@dnkboston @QasimRashid The Gazans elected them, even so. All wars have historic roots. There are no goodies and no baddies, just the less bad, the less evil.

*This time* Hamas started this. Its choice of time. Its choice of action.

One side here wants to survive; the other wants to completely destroy the other.

There is no way to agree over that. There's no possible peace of settlement or agreement or truce.

Expecting Israel to make deals with a group that will never retreat or rest from its sole stated intention, and which has not surrendered, is foolish, stupid and wilfully blind.

War is always terrible. It does not end until one side wins; it only pauses.

If Israel wins, I think it will be merciful. If Hamas wins, it absolutely will not. In its own words it exists to destroy the Jewish race completely. You can't negotiate with that.

@lproven And Israel was making deals with Hamas. If nothing else, they facilitated Qatar's payments to Hamas. Netanyahu thought Hamas would serve his ends more than any other party. I guess we just didn't understand what his ends were.

2/

@dnkboston Maybe so. That doesn't change the situation. One side wants to expunge a threat within its borders, the other side wants to expunge a cultural group of humanity from the world.

These things are not the same. They are not comparable evils.

@lproven They haven't been able to vote in almost 20 years. They were in a dictatorship. You don't hold the people in that kind of system responsible for what their leaders do when they have no agency.

And we have international agreements these days about the conduct of war, far too many of which have been violated in this conflict.

@dnkboston None of that invalidates or falsifies what I said.

It doesn't excuse anything either.

This is not an international conflict. It's not an invasion, where some of those rules have force. Although mostly they are ignored then as well, sadly.

Wars end when one side surrenders or is killed. That's not happened yet. Until it does it will get worse. That's how wars work.

Asking for one side to go easier on the other will only make it last longer.