I need to finish these emails… constructive feedback welcome… but I'm not looking for s heated debate.

THE LONG RANT VERSION…

Dear (Australian MPs or senators),

We need to revoke the permissions we have given Israel to wage a #war of total obliteration in #Gaza.

Thus #Australia should remove the political wing of Hamas from our designated #terrorist entity list. If we designate any related entity as terrorist, it should only include the divisions of the organisation that were directly involved in attacks on #civilians in Israel.

I don't like Hamas - I disagree with them on almost every issue - but the leadership of #Palestine should be chosen by Palestinians. Israeli or foreign imposed regimes will only exacerbate #violence.

Hamas is a political party, their militant wing is the Al-Qassam Brigades. Their relationship is roughly analogous to #SinnFein and the #IRA. The militant wing is the only division that is directly involved in attacks on Israel.

The rest of Hamas is a #civilian government. They were overdue for an election, but they have been in long term talks with the #Fatah opposition party to re-establish democracy in Palestine.

Designating the entire Hamas-led #government as terrorist lets the #IDF claim everything in #Gaza is a valid #military target. Including hospitals, police, banks, and every other facet of civilian rule. Even aid distribution efforts from Gaza's internal police force are being labelled "terrorist activity" by the IDF.

By designating the entirety of Gaza's governing party as terrorist Australia are effectively giving permission to the IDF to destroy everything in Gaza. Because everything is "Hamas infrastructure".

In in addition to the possibility of genocide (deemed "plausible" by the International Court of Justice) even the disingenuously alleged goals of this war - the total destruction of Hamas - will make the world less safe, and INCREASE the risk of #terrorism

If Australia's goal in shunning those listed entities is to reduce terrorism then including Hamas is unwarranted and possibly counter productive. In addition to the #undemocratic aspect of shunning an entire major political party based on the demands of outsiders.

Israel's current plan to completely exterminate the Hamas government is going to massively increase the real risk of #terrorism

The IDF are doing almost exactly what the #USA did (with Australian support despite massive public outcry) in #Iraq to the #Iraqi Ba'athist party. That disastrous attempt to completely dismantle a government and impose one from the outside ended up contributing to the rise of #ISIS

The IDF are using our excessively broad #terror designation (and others - by supposedly #democratic countries) to justify fighting the war in ways that would never usually be acceptable. They are looting millions of dollars "to stop it getting to Hamas" - #looting is a #WarCrime - they are systematically killing police officers who are not engaged in any offensive action against Israel, and they are trying to completely obliterate any #Palestinian civilian control of the Gaza Strip.

Arguably Australia should remove the special “terrorist” designation from #AlQassam military wing of Hamas as well. We can maintain normal measures (such as financial sanctions), like we would for any other violent organised crime network or a normal foreign military that has committed war crimes.But this giving them a special “terrorist” label, is acting like an endorsement of the IDF throwing out the rule book when fighting in Gaza.

The IDF have no intention of merely overthrowing Hamas or #demilitarising Gaza. They plan to execute nearly 40,000 suspected members of Hamas' militant wing, and the IDF are clearly willing to wipe out their entire families in the process. When the IDF talk about #HumanShields what this often means is the IDF barely bother trying to target actual combatants, they routinely kill their opponents by bombing family homes. Having a family is not “using human shields” it is simply being human!

Australia cannot claim to be unaware of the IDF using this strategy. The IDF killed two of our citizens this way in #Lebanon last year, Ali and Ibrahim Bazzi. Fighting for #Hezbollah is illegal under Australian law, and I am not saying we should change that, but summary execution for Ali's suspected involvement is in no way a #proportionate or morally acceptable penalty, especially when it directly causes the death of his brother Ibrahim in the process. Ibrahim was also an Australian citizen from #Sydney and he was due home shortly after he was killed, Ibrahim was not even suspected of fighting for Hezbollah.

We should not accept this total disregard for justice and morality. We ignored the summary execution of an Australian while he was at home with his family, meaning even Ali was NOT a #combatant, and now, predictably, it escalated to #Australian aid workers being murdered in Gaza.

We should hold Israel accountable for their violence. But ending the special terrorism designation of Hamas in Palestine and demanding justice for our citizens who were killed in Lebanon.

Sincerely,

(full name)

#auspol #auspol2024

cc @kirt @kirt @kirt

This is me trying to piece together what is going on from bits and pieces of contradictory biased news.

The #HamasCommander who the #IDF killed in #AlShifa this week seems to have been a #civilian #police officer. He's described as "head of internal security" in the more reliable Israeli media.

#ArabicLanguageMedia is reporting that the "Hamas operations" (extremely vaguely described in most #English reports) that he was coordinating were trying to get aid all the way to the north of the #GazaStrip

So, what he was doing was counter to Israeli military objectives (be that "destroy Hamas" or "annex Gaza" or "starve Palestinians" it fits all of them) but not #terrorism by any reasonable definition.

I think the #Hamas steeling aid story is possibly half true, but very distorted.

What the #HamasGovernment MIGHT be trying to do is evenly distribute inadequate aid to the whole #GazaStrip

This is described as "steeling aid" by Israeli #propaganda and possibly some disgruntled locals, if you trust Vox pops in #IsraeliPropaganda

(By the way, I use the term "propaganda" broadly i would describe a lot of art and music that I like and agree with as "propaganda". By my definition it is either mostly factual or entirely a subjective opinion. The lies I refer to as #disinformation instead.)

Getting aid to the north is an objective that has international support, including from Western liberal countries. #NorthGaza is the most severely deprived area. That is where the air drops have been focused.

But obviously people at the places where the aid arrives (who could get more of it if it wasn't distributed evenly) will not like it. I started writing this based on a #Memri news clip of an old woman who was angry at #Hamas "We came from Gaza City, it's for us" (refering to the aid that arrived where she was), i.e. she doesn't want it going north to the people who stayed north?

Some of those #civilians who stayed North are there because they don't want #Palestine to lose any more territory (or they personally don't want to lose their home or their home town), and some are there because they were too scared to travel south through a very active war zone. Saying they "support Hamas" if they stayed north is another half truth, they probably do, sort of, but only because they agree on the objective of keeping #GazaCity #Palestinian and Hamas are currently the people doing most to ensure that (after an initial move that seems to have been extremely counter productive).

Hamas want to keep Palestinian control of the North, they are resisting #annexation (an escalation from current situation of occupation), but that is not an offensive operation against Israel. So calling the cop they killed in Al-Shifa hospital a "terrorist" is not justified.

And, from all the information they've shown, killing him was unjustified. He was armed, but they've not provided any info to say it was with anything inappropriate for his position.

The IDF are have been systematically killing police, who are part of the Hamas government controlling Gaza, but they've provided no evidence that they are involved in attacks on Israel.

Also (now that most of Gaza's police are unwilling to get murdered by the IDF while trying to distribute aid optimally) most of the people with guns taking the aid, particularly after the IDF shot so many of the cops, are just petty theives and #profiteers from the kind of crime gang that exists in every densely populated area.

cc-ing my other profiles @kirt @kirt @kirt @evolving_string