Israel slams UN chief for saying Hamas attack ‘did not happen in a vacuum,’ calls for his resignation
Israel slams UN chief for saying Hamas attack ‘did not happen in a vacuum,’ calls for his resignation
Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the UN secretary-general addressed the 15-member UN Security Council Tuesday.
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They didn't call the UN chief an anti-Semite. I guess that's progress right?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/António_Guterres
What a terrible human being, looking at his life filled with works trying to improve people. He should be ashamed, trying to look at the cause instead of the effect of global situations.
But in all seriousness, the chilling effect is real, because he's the UN secretary general they're holding back a little bit, but they're demonstrating for everybody you better not say anything we don't agree with. And that has a real impact on political speech globally.
What is more worrying is that there is a witch hunt and if you support the regular Palestinian human rights you are kind of automatically condemned as anti-Semitic and supporter of terrorists.
And I fully agree with Antonio and I am really happy that he is one of the very few people who openly stands against Israel's policies of constant suppression of Palestine.
I don't know what the plan of Israel is for the Palestinians, and what they are exactly hoping to achieve apart from making those people hate them even more and actually involuntarily boosting Hamas popularity in the region and radicalizing even more people there.
According to Hamas’ own charter, “the cause” is that a Jew somewhere in the world has a pulse.
So I think it’s reasonable for us to say, no, we’re not going to address their stated grievances.
Hamas is not the underprivileged good guy here. It's the plight of the Palestinian people, that gives power to Hamas, that is the thing that needs to be addressed.
So saying looking at the situation that enables Hamas to get political power is a reasonable thing for a politician to say. That's literally the game they play every day. Trying to remove the power from an antagonistic belligerent is a good thing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_Charter
For what it's worth Hamas is a political organization, and they respond to political realities, in 2017 they attempted to amend their charter to give them the ability to negotiate.
The 2017 charter accepted for the first time the idea of a Palestinian state within the borders that existed before 1967 and rejects recognition of Israel which it terms as the "Zionist enemy".[2]
Again, not apologizing for them, not condoning them.. but there are political organization that exists in political reality is, and examining the realities that enable them to draw power from a population, is a reasonable thing to do, and in fact the job of a global politician - like the UN Secretary general.
That’s exactly the kind of thinking that the Israeli government had a month ago, that by negotiating with them, they could find mutual self interest. 10/7 has disabused them of that delusion.
When someone says their goal is genocide, you should probably take them at their word.
I take issue with the implication that moving the Palestinians into reservations, and embargoing them from all trade, economic development, and movement is 'finding mutual self interest', but sure, fine, lets go with it, I preserve the issue for appeal, but not worth arguing here.
So Israel has been punished for treating The Gaza strip with dignity and mutual self interest... What should the new strategy be?
If the goal is to minimize ongoing future violence, what do you do now?
So Israel has been punished for treating The Gaza strip with dignity and mutual self interest… What should the new strategy be?
I have no idea. I don't see a path from where we are to peace. But I am realistic about the fact that Hamas isn't just some club of would-be liberal democrats just yearning for freedom. That's just not realistic. They don't want a two-state solution. They don't want a "Jews still being alive" solution. And increasingly, it doesn't seem like most Israelis want a two state solution either.
I don't have a solution for you.
I don't think anybody here is saying Hamas is a good guy. I haven't seen a single comment in this thread defending Hamas.
A lot of people however, are rationally, and correctly, pointing out that organizations like Hamas are a symptom of an oppressed people. Like an apartheid state, or slave state, we can look at history for examples of people striking out over and over again. It's not a justification, it is however an observation based on history. Slave rebellions are bloody affairs, and the innocent are killed, but the solution to slave rebellions is not harder slavery.
The two-state solution is no longer viable. It is impossible to break apart Palestine from Israel. Especially looking at how fractured the West Bank is, all of the Israeli exclaves, and all of the Palestinian reservations or intermixed - one might say even deliberately to prevent a two-state solution from being viable.
I can't speak for the next 10 to 20 years, but the long-term viable solution in 30 years is going to be a single country encompassing both current Israel and current Palestine, in a secular, non-ethnocentric, non-religious democratic organization. Where people are equal regardless of their ethnicity, religion, or language.
And it's going to be a very bloody time to get to that stage, but it's the only stable steady state.
A lot of people however, are rationally, and correctly, pointing out that organizations like Hamas are a symptom of an oppressed people. Like an apartheid state, or slave state, we can look at history for examples of people striking out over and over again.
You can see it that way, but you also have to take Hamas's stated goal into consideration. Their stated goal is not to liberate their people, it's to be the new oppressor, and a far worse one than that.
Let's put it another way. There are around two million Arab Israelis. They're in the Israeli parliament, they serve in its courts, in the military, etc. Would they be liberated if Hamas achieved its goal? They would probably be viewed as collaborators and executed.
This myth that Hamas are just freedom fighters, like Nelson Mandela or Gandhi, really needs to be dispelled. It has no basis in reality.
There's this weird urge in the minds of people to try to find a hero story. There's no hero story. And if groups like Hamas weren't wreaking havoc in the area for the past 50+ years, realistically, a Palestinian state would probably exist.
I can’t speak for the next 10 to 20 years, but the long-term viable solution in 30 years is going to be a single country encompassing both current Israel and current Palestine, in a secular, non-ethnocentric, non-religious democratic organization. Where people are equal regardless of their ethnicity, religion, or language.
Except no one in the region wants that. Certainly not Hamas.
you keep falling into this Pro Israeli or Pro Hamas dichotomy, those arnt the only options. We can be anti-apartheid and anti-hamas at the same time, but recognize the systemic nature of the violence that arises because of the oppression.
The Israeli Arabs are a good example of what a integrated Palestine Israel might look like to start with, just expand that to the entire population. Of course there are some outstanding issues to hammer out even with our model Israeli Arab integration wikipedia which ultimately means the government needs to change from being a ethnostate government to a national citizenship based government secular of religion. But I'm not going to let perfection get in the way of good enough, if we could integrate everyone today even with the racism issues, thats a huge win.
you keep falling into this Pro Israeli or Pro Hamas dichotomy, those arnt the only options. We can be anti-apartheid and anti-hamas at the same time, but recognize the systemic nature of the violence that arises because of the oppression.
But see, you're falling into the exact dichotomy you said you wanted to avoid. It's far too simplistic to just frame it as "oppressor" and "oppressed." By labeling one group as the oppressed and another group as the oppressor, you're taking a side.
It's easy to fall into that narrative, because Israel has most of the power. Life in Israel is far better than life in Gaza. In response to 10/7, Israel pushed Gaza into a humanitarian crisis by cutting off power, medicine, food, and even drinking water into Gaza (though Biden managed to get them to turn the water back on).
So it's easy to look at them and say, "oh, one group is oppressed and the other is an oppressor." But it's also naive. Hamas's stated goal is genocide. It's not really an "oppressor and oppressed" situation when the allegedly oppressed are explicitly genocidal.
The Israeli Arabs are a good example of what a integrated Palestine Israel might look like to start with, just expand that to the entire population. Of course there are some outstanding issues to hammer out even with our model Israeli Arab integration wikipedia which ultimately means the government needs to change from being a ethnostate government to a national citizenship based government secular of religion. But I’m not going to let perfection get in the way of good enough, if we could integrate everyone today even with the racism issues, thats a huge win.
But then you're essentially playing the role of a colonial power, telling the locals how it's going to be. That's what George W. Bush tried to do in Iraq and Afghanistan. It didn't work.
If you did a poll people of any ethnic and religious group between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and you asked them, "would you like to live in a secular state with both Israelis and Palestinian Arabs sharing the same land," do you think you'd get a majority? I bet you'd get fewer than 20%.
Probably more Israelis would be open and willing to agree to that than Palestinian Arabs, but I doubt you'd see a majority from either camp. And a "one secular state" solution isn't something any world leader is really talking about. It wasn't part of the Oslo or Camp David accords, isn't what anyone is proposing, etc.
You keep bringing up Hamas, I'm not defending Hamas.
Israel is engaged in systemic Apartheid against ethnic arabs in their territory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_apartheid https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/07/19/israeli-apartheid-threshold-crossed https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/03/1114702
The Apartheid is the root cause of the violence, which doesn't excuse the violence, but its clearly the main catalyst.
Israel is acting as the Colonial power in this scenario.
Two State solutions are off the table given the Israel settlements integrated all throughout the westbank as of today. That only leaves one state solutions. Either Israel kills every single Arab in the country, or they have to learn to live with them in peace which means ending Apartheid.
The whataboutism on this issue is off the charts. If your best defense of Israel's government is to compare it to a terrorist group, don't be surprised when people think of it as a terrorist group.
I didn't mention the Israeli government, except to point out that they were delusional. This isn't whataboutism.
This is a statement free of whataboutism: Hamas is a terrorist organization intent on killing as many Jews as possible, worldwide, without stopping.
That's it. No need to expand on that. That's a statement free of whataboutism.
I'm sure you're probably not wrong in spirit, being a terrorist organization charter and all... but a good way to convince people you're taking out of your ass is to quote a source and have the text of the quote not be in the source.
The context is not that the Hamas charter is reasonable, it's that the sentiment that birthed the charter may have historical foundation. Just like Israeli animosity towards muslims as a whole has historical foundation.
That’s a little like saying you have to understand that Hitler’s rise was in the wake of World War 1’s devastating reparations. Or Stalin’s purges were after Nicholas II and his various misdeeds.
Everyone knows Hamas seized power about a half century after the British two-state division. And about a quarter century after the 1967 war. It also matters not one iota.
It is factually accurate to say that the economic and political aftermath of WW1 was a defining factor in Hitler's rise to power.
Saying that does not in any way endorse the despicable beliefs they espoused.
Of course it's accurate. All world events, all of them, happen in some kind of context. Everyone knows that. No one believes that there was some kind of parallel universe where Israel and Hamas were just plopped down onto a map with no history and no context. Everyone knows the context.
The problem, however, is when people say stupid shit like, "Well, we can't condemn Hamas without first discussing--..."
That's when you can stop them. You can say, actually, yes, you can condemn Hamas without caveat or whataboutism. It's a really simple thing to do. We do it all the time.
That’s when you can stop them. You can say, actually, yes, you can condemn Hamas without caveat or whataboutism.
No, no you can't. Not at an intellectually honest level of trying to resolve an issue.
How a person reacts to you is based not on just that moment in time, but everything that leads up to that moment.
You can't ignore history if you want to fix the present for a better future. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
That’s when you can stop them. You can say, actually, yes, you can condemn Hamas without caveat or whataboutism.
No, no you can’t.
I just did.
I'll do it again. I categorically condemn Hamas. There.
Everyone knows Hamas seized power about a half century after the British two-state division.
Perhaps you're not in the US, but no. This is absolutely not true. You're wildly overestimating the number of people who have a contextual understanding of this situation.
I'm an American living in Europe. In both countries, I'd say people are aware there is a context. Maybe they don't fully know what the context is, but they know there is a context.
But again, you don't need context to condemn Hamas. You might need it to understand Hamas, but you don't need it to condemn Hamas.
Again, wildly overestimating the intelligence of the average American. Especially when it comes to history of things that aren't in America. Or just history in general.
In my experience abroad, Americans have a decent handle on it, at least compared to Europeans. I've met more than one Irish person who, for example, did not know that the Six Day War ever happened.
LOL I would bet on the average European over the average US citizen any time on that question.
Travel more.
But again, you don’t need context to condemn Hamas.
You can condemn the actions, but if you want to fix the problem, then you better learn the context in which the actions take place. Otherwise it's just going to be centuries more of throwing bombs at each other.
You can condemn the actions, but if you want to fix the problem, then you better learn the context in which the actions take place.
According to Hamas, their grievance is that Jews are alive. I'm not going to address that grievance.
Otherwise it’s just going to be centuries more of throwing bombs at each other.
That seems likely, but just denying the objectives of Hamas isn't going to bring peace either. For the last 20 years, the international community has been trying to follow the Oslo and Camp David peace accords, but there's been only one even remotely interested partner.
Pretty sure the average American would struggle to find Israel on a map, let alone know that there is context to the current situation.
As an American, it's sad of me to say this, but trying to get an American to be able to tell you the location of just all 50 states in the US would be problematic.
Our education system situation has truly been downgraded for quite a while.
Those things are completely accurate and it's odd that you would bring them up as examples. In which way is it not appropriate to understand the historical context in which an event took place?
Exactly.
Imagine thinking it's wise to ignore the factors that led to the rise of fascism and believe there's nothing useful to learn from them.
It's good to understand the historical context. All for it.
What historical context doesn't do, however, is forgive the unforgivable.
Then why did Netanyahu fund them then? The PLO was open to a two state solution.
Hamas gets almost all of its direct funding from Iran and Russia.
Israel, along with the United Nations, United States, EU, etc funds humanitarian projects in Gaza. Some of that aid is surely diverted to Hamas and Hamas controls Gaza, but the moral case for allowing some aid to be diverted to Hamas in exchange for avoiding a humanitarian catastrophe is strong.
I assume they were talking about this
Toward the end of Netanyahu’s fifth government in 2021, approximately 2,000-3,000 work permits were issued to Gazans. This number climbed to 5,000 and, during the Bennett-Lapid government, rose sharply to 10,000.
That's what counts as empowering Hamas? Letting Palestinians earn a living?
I mean I guess you can spin it that way, but it's a spurious claim to make.
The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state. Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organization with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad.
Along with the rest of the article this describes the point in general terms. You can research more if you want to
I mean, maybe there was some kind of conspiracy to pit Hamas against Fatah.
To me, it seems more likely that they were trying to treat Hamas as what people here act like it is: some kind of governing party in Gaza to be negotiated with. That was obviously an error.
Conflating Israeli war crimes with Hamas. Nice Hasbara talking point.