This is a refreshed 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.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
6mo ago·Edited 6mo ago
I second this. Until Hamas is eradicated there is nothing you can do to not indirectly aid Hamas. Even if you could e.g. give money to a charity to provide food with a 100% guarantee the money would be used on bread and cheese instead of weapons this would still free up money for Hamas to move from providing food for the civilians to weapons instead.
For an example consider a situation where Hamas spends $10 million a year on food and $10 million a year on weapons, where Gaza needs $20 million of food a year (the other $10 million of food comes from current charity). If you donate $1 million to charity so that Gaza is getting $11 million of food from charity Hamas now only needs to spend $9 million to sort of feed its population, which has just freed up an extra $1 million for them to use on weapons instead of food.
The net result of your charitable donation is that the Gazans get the same amount of food they were getting before but Hamas has more money to spend on rockets.
I understand this is a toy example with numbers pulled out of thin air, but as far as I can tell, Hamas spends nothing on feeding civilians and leaves that as a problem for others to solve. And then steals the aid when it comes in.
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Notes -
I second this. Until Hamas is eradicated there is nothing you can do to not indirectly aid Hamas. Even if you could e.g. give money to a charity to provide food with a 100% guarantee the money would be used on bread and cheese instead of weapons this would still free up money for Hamas to move from providing food for the civilians to weapons instead.
For an example consider a situation where Hamas spends $10 million a year on food and $10 million a year on weapons, where Gaza needs $20 million of food a year (the other $10 million of food comes from current charity). If you donate $1 million to charity so that Gaza is getting $11 million of food from charity Hamas now only needs to spend $9 million to sort of feed its population, which has just freed up an extra $1 million for them to use on weapons instead of food.
The net result of your charitable donation is that the Gazans get the same amount of food they were getting before but Hamas has more money to spend on rockets.
I understand this is a toy example with numbers pulled out of thin air, but as far as I can tell, Hamas spends nothing on feeding civilians and leaves that as a problem for others to solve. And then steals the aid when it comes in.
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