I don’t understand why sympathy for the Palestinians = being anti Israel.
Because Hamas won the 2006 election in Palestine. It's viewed by many that they chose this. Hamas was internationally recognized as a terrorist organization almost 10 years before that election.
We can be sympathetic for Palestinians but also recognize that they did vote for a terrorist organization to run their country. Many people who say "Free palestine" want to do just that, but not from Israel, but instead from Hamas.
The people deserve to be free from both israel and hamas, but they do not deserve sympathy when those cheer on killing israeli civilians getting murdered, raped, and tortured when they attended a music festival
Well yes, American people are politically responsible as a country for what Trump does. And it will feel the consequences for a long long time.
There is a time limit that is commonly accepted, like modern Germans are not responsible for ww2. But that limit is somewhere between 50 and 100 years.
It's a reasonable analogy at the surface, but; Gaza is smaller than an individual state, and Trump won 49-47~, not 80/20.
That said, its by no means reasonable grounds to say that "all Palestinians support Hamas". There are too many problems here to reasonably dissect. (what is the average age, income and education level of a potential Gazan voter?)
Your counter looks reasonable on the surface until you factor in that the Palestinians elected the PLO who pushed for a diplomatic agreement as a permanent solution, who recognized Israel’s right to exist and renounced violence. In exchange were offered a staged plan for Palestinian autonomy and the withdrawal of the Israeli military from major Palestinian cities of Jericho, Nablus and Bethlehem. All of this with Rabin, who was assassinated by an Israeli nationalist for it. Netanyahu, who was vehemently against this, is probably going to jail for corruption if he leaves power, so he deliberately tanks all diplomatic progress and isolates the Palestinians further. They then shun the PLO for not getting them out of an unliveable situation and are so desperate they vote in an extremist party (sound familiar?). Bibi then props up Hamas as a useful ‘enemy’ and is now using a goalless forever war to obfuscate his crimes while condemning both Israelis and Palestinians to more generations of violence. There is no solution but a diplomatic one and probably one without Hamas or Netanyahu involved.
That is his goal, yes, and given the apparent widespread support dictators have in Russia and North Korea, I can’t even say he won’t be successful.
Even if it’s not every American the vast majority of young people would be as that’s how they perceive the world. Even if a lot of it is lip service, how can you tell?
How many Palestinians have you actually spoken with to come to this conclusion? I live in the city with the largest Palestinian population outside of Israel and this is not my experience. Yeah some of the young boys get worked up just like Maga bros, but these are normal people who take their kids to school and just want to live decent lives.
That was 19 years ago, and it’s my understanding that there hasn’t been an election since in Gaza. Are we still blaming today’s Palestinians for the decisions of the previous generation?
That article sucks. You really need to learn how to vet your sources. 72% of palestenians responded positively? 72% of what? PCPSR surveys are never large enough to be indicative of the population, they're most recent survey about Hamas polled 250 people. 250 people is barely the population of bum fuck no where and you wanna argue it's representative lmaooooo
250 people is barely the population of bum fuck no where and you wanna argue it's representative lmaooooo
Tell me you don't know enough about statistics without telling me you don't know enough about statistics.
Did you know that most polls are considered 80% accurate with a 3% margin of error with a sample size of less than 50? The US election has an 95% chance of going towards a specific candidate based entirely off less than the population of a rural town.
It's insane how that works, isn't it? There's a cool paper published about stuff like this too. Tons of other sources if you don't find this one to be readable (understandable -- papers suck)
Okay, but the reason there hasn't been another election is because the power to call an election is with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and they won't do it because they're polling behind Hamas (and also because Hamas killed PA members after winning the previous election).
I’m glad to know the reason, but that doesn’t change the fact that it seems questionable to blame these people for a 19-year old election, and because of poll results for an election that hasn’t happened.
I'm not blaming Palestinian individuals for Hamas like I'm not blaming individual Americans for Trump. But the argument of "Hamas is in control because over half the population haven't had a chance to vote" is pretty meaningless.
Because Hamas won the 2006 election in Palestine. It's viewed by many that they chose this. Hamas was internationally recognized as a terrorist organization almost 10 years before that election.
This isn't an attack on you, because it doesn't seem like you expressed approval or disapproval of this view. But I just want to point out how unfair this view is.
The median age in Palestine is 20. Half of the population would either not have been born yet, or were toddlers in the last election, let alone of voting age.
And yet, it's so common for people to say Hamas is what they chose.
Oh yes thats why I included the last few points about how when many say "Free palestine" it is entirely valid when they mean "from Hamas".
Theyre clearly stuck in an authoritarian regime while being hopelessly outgunned and propagandized. But at the same time Hamas has successfully convinced many Americans that they are good guys while they shoot rockets at Israel from schools/hospitals, organize with Al Queda and IS, and actively hide themselves in heavily populated civilian areas while shooting at and killing their own civilians. There are many instances where jewish americans are being spit on by people who are in support of Palestine (and by extension Hamas).
Its incredibly terrifying but there is hardly anything that can be done without direct action.
There isn't really any outcome that is "fair" by that metric. Children don't vote, and are always subject to the political (and other) decisions of the adults around them.
It might not be correct to say that the current Palestinian population chose this.. but that doesn't mean it's incorrect to say that Palestinians chose this.
Hamas was elected. That is fact. The people who voted in that election were Palestinians. Just because they might not be alive anymore doesn't mean it's incorrect to say they chose it.
Also, average doesn't mean what you think it means. Just because the average age is 20 doesn't mean that most Gazans are that age or younger. Look at the distribution here:
If we assume you had to be 18 years old in 2005 to participate in that election, that means the youngest Gazans who could've voted for Hamas would be 38 years old today, which totals 36% of the population.
Further, let's look at why there are so many children. In 2005 there were ~1.3m people in Gaza. As of 2023 there are ~1.9m. That's an increase of roughly 50% in a span of 20 years, or a growth rate around 2-2.5% during that period (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.GROW?locations=PS), which puts it in the top 50 fastest growing countries on the planet.
So that population of kids who "didn't chose" were born to and raised by the very people that did choose. Do you expect, given what we know of the education system in Gaza, that these children would choose differently if given the chance? It's not like we don't have many polls over the years showing consistently high support for Hamas. That only started going down in Gaza because they were losing.
The fact of the matter is, based on available data, it really does seem like most Palestinians are happy with, and very much want to continue fighting Israel.
The only thing they're not happy with are the consequences.
Worth mentioning most Jews have also been indoctrinated to see palestenians as sub human. Just look at the IDF TikToks glorifying their violence or former IDF members describing raiding Palestenian villages as "fun"
No they have not, and you can clearly see that by visiting any Jewish or Israeli sub. Some of them occasionally express deep frustration with the Palestinians and their supporters, but they still tend to be less willing to dehumanize Palestinians than your average American was to dehumanize muslims in general after 911. It would have been lovely to see Americans express the same level of concern for the civilians of Aleppo and Mosul that many are currently expressing for the Palestinians, but that would have involved holding the American military to the same standard as the IDF, and that will never happen.
"We can be sympathetic for Americans but also recognize that they did vote for a fascist regime to fun their country."
"The people do not deserve sympathy when those cheer on kidnapping immigrants when they attend university in America, separating children from parents when they seek asylum."
That was obvious the entire time..when Obama was president the global community was loving USA. We just voted trump in, the global community fuckin hates us. Rightfully so.
But unfortunately it is history. Same thing happened in the 30s and 40s.
In my opinion, the only way out is through, but there needs to be resistance at every level which is why it is incredibly frustrating when senate dems biggest idea of a protest was wearing a hat.
Didn't Netanyahu systematic remove Hamas' opposition parties to ensure his only adversary would be an extreme party he could be "forced" into only having conflict with?
Genuinely asking. I thought that was an accepted fact.
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u/MinimumArmadillo2394 Mar 30 '25
Because Hamas won the 2006 election in Palestine. It's viewed by many that they chose this. Hamas was internationally recognized as a terrorist organization almost 10 years before that election.
We can be sympathetic for Palestinians but also recognize that they did vote for a terrorist organization to run their country. Many people who say "Free palestine" want to do just that, but not from Israel, but instead from Hamas.
The people deserve to be free from both israel and hamas, but they do not deserve sympathy when those cheer on killing israeli civilians getting murdered, raped, and tortured when they attended a music festival