There are people making the spurious claim that Hamas was elected by the people of Gaza and thus are the legitimate government of Gaza and thus it’s okay to kill residents of Gaza without any restraint.
This is utterly ridiculous. Hamas was elected *once*, in 2006, on a platform of ending Fatah corruption that was siphoning most aid to the Palestinians into corrupt politicians’ pockets. They haven’t allowed an election since, because they’d *lose*, having turned out to be just as corrupt as Fatah but way more violent. They have proceeded to impose their rule at gunpoint upon the residents of Gaza, probably killing more Palestinians than Israel has killed in the years since. Even Amnesty International has recognized that Hamas’s rule over Gaza has been brutal and in violation of all humanitarian principles. The chances of Hamas being re-elected if Hamas ever allowed a free and fair election (which they have not done for *SEVENTEEN YEARS*) is essentially zero.
I’m not going to be upset at all if Hamas gets exterminated by the Israelis like the vermin they are. And I suspect the Palestinians will breathe a sigh of relief if that happens too. Unless Israel truly believes that all Palestinians love Hamas and decide to start slaughtering Palestinians indiscriminately, which would move the focus away from the people who need killing (Hamas leadership and gunmen) and allow Hamas to get away with their mass murder of both Israelis and Palestinians.
— Badtux the Geopolitics Penguin
A Jewish friend of mine calculated how many Palestinians how voted for Hamas back when could still be alive and then what percentage of the current Ps that would be. It worked out to maybe 11%
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I have been dismayed at the rap sheet of Israeli abuse against the Ps…given how Jews suffered for millennia, I’d think they’d handle power and its abuse with care, but no. My wife, PhD in religion, pointed Deuteronomy 20:16 and the dreadful history of the Maccabees, said that ascribing a Chosen-ness to one’s tribe is sure poison.
And our hands aren’t clean. Our Manifest Destiny is no different from the Israel’s fever dream of a Greater Israel, our treatment of Indians and blacks no different than Israel’s slow motion genocide of the Ps.
But anyway. Such a lovely species
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[…] Badtux has a radical idea: “No, the Palestinian civilians don’t somehow ‘deserve’ being killed.” […]
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When you discuss warfare in moralistic terms of right and wrong and good and evil, then people’s heads heat up, and they yearn to commit evil, for War is Hell; but when you discuss warfare in pragmatic terms of gain and loss and life and death, then people’s heads cool down, and they yearn to flee from Hell.
On the other hand, if your speech is too coldly pragmatic, then hothead moralists will sound better than you, and win elections.
So sometimes pragmatism is more moral than moralism, but moralism is more pragmatic than pragmatism.
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