This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
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Notes -
This topic perhaps more than others is impossible to find good analysis of. Could some of you help me understand the arguments around something?
I routinely see people call Gaza "an open air prison". But...isnt' Egypt participating in this open air imprisonment? Egypt has a border with Gaza. If the Israelis are imprisoning the Gazans, then aren't the Egyptians doing the same thing?
And why would these two groups coordinate on this? Same question goes for: shutting of water/electricity. Why would Egypt help Israel with this? Why doesn't Egypt simply give the Gazans the water they need?
edit: I think my question was unclear here. I understand the obvious answers which are basically: Hamas/Gaza are terrorists. Of course Egypt doesn't want them. What I'm asking for is for somebody to steelman the liberal position that Gaza is an "open air prison" and that this is Israel's fault.
Downtrodden Palestinians are an important weapon in Islam's war on Israel--arguably, the most important weapon. They are the "victims" the Muslim world can hold up to show the perfidy and savagery of the Jewish state. If they stop being victims, then they stop being useful. The ~20% of Israel's citizens who are assimilated Palestinians are of no interest to the terrorists of Hamas (or their masters abroad).
None of the countries nominally "allied" with Palestine appear to give half a shit about the well-being of Palestinians. What they want is for there to be Muslims in Israel fighting the never-ending Jihad against Judaism. And better yet, for there to be disposable Muslims; certainly other Islamist countries are not in general keen on inviting Palestinian refugees into their nations, and there is no need for them to risk their lives fighting Israelis if the Palestinians will do it for them. The goal for Hamas is not, ever, peace--and certainly not anything like assimilation and coexistence.
This is also why there are so many advocates for Palestinian "right of return" under much broader conditions than have never been extended to any other ethnic group.
The Israel-Palestine conflict is complicated and ugly (on both sides!) in so many ways, but it simply cannot be understood without first acknowledging the central truth that it is a holy war, being funded and soft-supported around the world by hard-line Muslims (and their political stooges in American government, naturally). This is not, at bottom, about colonialism, or apartheid, or anything like that. It is about the deep, abiding intolerance of Muslims for non-Muslims, especially in the holy cities of Islam, including Jerusalem. Treating the conflict as resulting from anything other than simple, religiously-prescribed Muslim bigotry has littered history with failed peace agreements, because the problems those agreements attempted to solve have never been the real problem.
If the Palestinians stop fighting, there will be no more fighting. If the Israelis stop fighting, there will be no more Israel.
Oh come on... You know perfectly well how much aid Israel gets and how much aid Palestine gets from the US. US officials will randomly go on bizarre outbursts about how their number 1 responsibility as secretary for state... is standing up for Israel. The US is 200% on Israel's side, they've got billions in munitions 'pre-supplied' for Israel to use in emergencies like this and more on the way.
Consensus-building much?
And yet powerful American politicians are clearly less than 100% on Israel's side.
I did not suggest, sneakily or directly, that "we all know" this to be true, and I did not treat it as a given truth. I argued that it is true, complete with a couple of links to background context and further information, and then I suggested in essence that if people fail to understand this point, the mistakes of the past will be repeated in the future. That is not consensus-building, that is just making an argument.
The squad is 6 people out of 430 members of one branch of the legislature. They're famous but not very powerful.
The official policy of the last two Democrat presidents of the US has been to fund Iran via "nuclear agreements" which results in funds directly flowing to Hamas and Hezbollah. It aint 6/430. It has been 1/1.
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