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 -
What do you expect the average citizen of Gaza, who is about 14 years old, to do about Hamas?
The same thing I expect all 14 year olds to do re: governance?
That’s a total non-sequitur.
Hamas could end this particular blockade tomorrow given they govern Gaza - your case that there are a lot of children affected is a strong one for why giving up a few hostages in order to save the lives of children would be the right thing to do!
On the other hand during the Holocaust there was no “Government of the Jews” holding land that the Nazis were fighting and there was no demands by the Nazi government re: Jews except for dying or escaping if lucky.
What is the non-sequitur of holding one million children hostage until an independent terrorist group releases their hostages? Think about how this rule could be extrapolated. What would Afghanis not have been justified in doing to America to free the 150 innocent men who were literally tortured in Guantanamo Bay for years? Or consider that the Nazis infamously blamed all Jews on the few thousand or ten thousand Jews who were involved in the Soviet Revolution and the failed November revolution. This moral rule blows. How about we just don’t threaten to starve (or “thirst out” or whatever) one million children.
It seems like all of these arguments boils down to “we will let Hamas utilize their population to protect Hamas.”
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Do you believe that Hamas doesn’t rule Gaza? Otherwise I’m not sure how your argument makes sense.
If the Taliban were the rulers of Afghanistan at the time Afghanis were in Guantanamo they would have been well within their rights to embargo America.
Again - in order to compare this to the Holocaust, what demands did the Nazis make of a “Jewish government” that was completely sovereign in the territory it controlled that the “Jewish government” had within its power to do to end the Holocaust? Frankly if this hypothetical “Jewish government” was privileging the lives of 100 German hostages or some failed Bolshevik revolutionaries over the lives of 6 million Jews I would think they were pretty evil!
Hamas as the ruling entity of Gaza could release these hostages today if they wanted to end the embargo of the territory they exclusively control!
I had understood that their military branch is independent of their ruling branch for op sec reasons
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Hamas isn’t independent, that’s the point. It’s not like Al Qaeda was to Saudi or even to Taliban Afghanistan, Hamas is literally the government of this territory and has per polling the support of the vast majority of the people.
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