You think you’re going to get a better answer by asking that here rather than by reading the Wikipedia article or a media company’s summary of what Hamas is?!
As neutrally as possible:
Hamas is an organization in the area of historical Palestine. It has been governing the Gaza Strip, a small piece of land between Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea, since 2007.
Ever since then, Israel has been blockading the Gaza Strip. Every few years, eg. in 2014 and 2021 and now again, Hamas fires rockets at Israel or otherwise attacks it, to which Israel responds with airstrikes.
Palestinian narrative: Israel is a settler colonial state that has taken away Palestinian land and is imprisoning Gazans in Gaza. Fighting against that is legitimate resistance against oppression. Israel’s goal is ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
Israeli narrative: Israel is a safe haven for the historically oppressed Jewish people. Arabs have plenty of other countries for themselves. The aim of Hamas is to eliminate the Jewish state and maybe even the Jewish people. Israel is doing its best to avoid civilian casualties in its airstrikes against Gaza.
The actual truth: There is no such thing as the actual truth. There is a reason why this is the most difficult conflict in the world.
inb4 people with strong opinions on both sides tell me their opinion is obviously right and the above is nowhere near neutral
Adding onto this: the conflict has been going on since way earlier than hamas emergence.
Of course. If you read older history, you’ll notice that this used to be an Arab-Israeli conflict with Arab states on one side and Israel on the other. They fought wars against each other like in 1948, 1967 and whenever the Yom Kippur War was.
Nowadays Arab states and Israel aren’t anywhere near as hostile to each other as they used to be, so the conflict now is mostly between Israel and Palestinian organizations (PLO, Hamas).
Tom Kippur war was 1973
Tom Kippur war was 1973
Ah, yes. When the Arabs tried to dislodge the Israelis on Tom’s birthday.
I’ve been had by autocorrect yet again
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Ideologically Muslim Arab states by in large.
No matter what “narrative” you seek to believe, the fact is that Hamas hasn’t been firing every once in awhile - They have been firing rockets and mortars regularly. Sometimes daily. You can see a list here and more info here
These attacks almost exclusively target civilians. more than 20,000 rockets in the past 20 years.
Additionally, airborne arson attacks are carried out…
edit:fixed links
You fucked up your links by putting bangs in front of them. Don’t put bangs in front of your links. That’s for embedding images
Thanks, just started using boost and I used it’s link function. either I don’t know what I’m doing (probably), or it’s a big.
Point taken. The point was mainly that the escalations (to which Israel responds with airstrikes or invasions) happen every few years. Most of the time, people in other parts of the world don’t really hear about what’s going on there in the media. The times when we do are probably because such an escalation happens (e.g. now).
Your links don’t work for me by the way, I can see in the source code what you meant to link to, but they don’t display as links for me.
Thanks, fixed the links.
What most people don’t realize is how much this situation is constant. these escalations are only peaks in an ongoing conflict.
Imagine if Germany launched V2 rockets at Britain for so long the British had built automated defenses to shoot them down.
Largely ineffective rocket attacks. See these charts for what near daily rocket attacks and near daily snipers, police beatings, etc, do for relative casualties between Israeli and Palestinian peoples.
Bravo. This is the right answer.
It’s used to put nails in
TLDR
The Holocaust cannot possibly be true because “enlightened centrists” cannot handle truth and simply declares “there is no such thing as the actual truth.”
The funny thing about this comment is that it tells me nothing about whether you are sympathetic to Israel or to the Palestinians, they might both write exactly this and think they’ve completely destroyed me.
I looked into your comment history and see you’re pro-Palestinian, but I would not have been able to guess this just from this comment.
that it tells me nothing about whether you are sympathetic to Israel or to the Palestinians
Why should that matter to a centrist?
After all… the whole reason centrists love this whole “there is no truth” trope is because it’s one of the bitterly few ways to justify clinging to whichever false narrative is least threatening to the status quo.
So why should you care?
The aim of Hamas is to eliminate the Jewish state and maybe even the Jewish people.
Should be in the “actual truth” section, as this was confirmed by hamas many times.
Some people in hamas and we should add that multiple Israeli government members have called for genocide of Palestinians as well dive the raid and well well before.
You can’t really mention one without the other.
It’s written as hamas’ goal in their documents.
multiple Israeli government members have called for genocide of Palestinians
There are no signs of it being a real vector of their policy because otherwise they would act unprovoked upon it. When did that happen at all?
Sure, and there’s good reason to believe they weren’t actually elected.
Bro they’ve killed 3000 plus kids in less than a month, of genocide isn’t their intent it is certainly the inevitable outcome. When did Israel act unprovoked? Like at least once a week for 30 years, pay attention.
Sure, and there’s good reason to believe they weren’t actually elected.
They operate Gaza and all the humanitarian aid. If someone has power over Gaza it’s them. And if not, then there is no one to talk to.
Bro they’ve killed 3000 plus kids in less than a month
3000 Palestinians? These numbers come from hamas so they are not to be trusted by default. Also, you have to consider how hamas forces Israel to attack civillian infrastructure by firing missiles from it. And hamas doesn’t provide any defense for Palestinians, and they say it’s not their responsibility. Man, “let us fire rockets at Jews, don’t let them attack us back, don’t stop those funds coming so we could build more rockets, and look how we promise to repeat mad attacks again and again until we destroy Israel, because we are victims”, pretty cool guys. And people are like “wtf do as they say, they are freedom fighters”.
When did Israel act unprovoked? Like at least once a week for 30 years, pay attention.
Please provide exact cases of 2 unprovoked attacks between September 22 and October 7.
They operate part of Gaza. Also no, there are hundreds of third party groups that organize aid, the fact Israel calls them all Hamas does not make it true.
Those numbers come from third party groups like the UN. https://www.ochaopt.org/data/casualties
Hamas doesn’t force anything, Israel refusing to think of humanity and instead of ground assault just bomb the whole place off the face of earth. if I hold a gun to a child to force a bank robber to give up am I the bad person or are we both shitty examples of humanity?
Bro, settlers spit from their raised walkways onto Palestinians literally every day. Small slights matter and I’m pretty sure they roof knocked a building on the 19th anyway.
They operate part of Gaza.
Who operates the rest of it then?
Those numbers come from third party groups like the UN. https://www.ochaopt.org/data/casualties
This website is promising but there are no “over 3000 children over a month” figures here.
Hamas doesn’t force anything
When you attack a developed country with an army from a specific location, you are asking to bomb this location as a response. Don’t know if it’s s surprise to anyone, but it just works like that. You wouldn’t suppose it would mean “please don’t bomb this location” instead?
if I hold a gun to a child to force a bank robber to give up am I the bad person or are we both shitty examples of humanity?
If before doing so you shoot that robber’s friends and pretend it never happened, you are worse than those robbers.
But really, this analogy is beautiful. I now know the proper solution to all our problems, and with no bloodshed. Here is what Hamas should say: “We are martyrs and you are oppressors. We refuse to live under oppression. We mined every single house and every single Palestinian. If you don’t reconsider we will detonate it all at once.”
Bro, settlers spit from their raised walkways onto Palestinians literally every day.
What walkways? As if anyone has the time to spit at all anywhere, damn.
Small slights matter and I’m pretty sure they roof knocked a building on the 19th anyway.
What building? Who? I’m not getting it. “It doesn’t matter that Israel didn’t bombed a hospital because at the same day they bombed another building anyway”?
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No, that’s hummus. Hamas are a domesticated South American camelid.
no, that’s llamas – hamas is the dark organic matter in soil
No that’s humus - hamas are big pickups/SUV’s made for civilians, based on the Humvee’s design.
No that’s Hummers. Hamas are tools used to pound nails.
No, that’s hammers. Hamas is how to spell “never” in Spanish.
no, that’s jamás, Hamas is what Einstein exclaimed when he figured out what was missing in his famous equation.
No! Thats a mass, Hamas is the last name of the star of the upcoming john wick spin off “ballerina”.
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What is hummus?
Correct, you get to pick the next category.
Terrorist groups!
This terrorist group wants the destruction of Israel and is centered in the Gaza strip.
Let’s keep going with Delicious Dips Ken.
Some kind of dip made from chickpeas. 🤷🏻♂️
Try to keep up…
edit: Shit,my bad. I replied on the wrong comment. Intended to comment the above on the reply that asked “what is hummus”.
Whooosh
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They were trying to make the joke go in a single-definition circle, which destroys the joke’s format. 🤷♂️
The joke continuing in its normal format proves your attestment to be wrong.
Nope you’re wrong, in fact, the jokes continued on a different comment thread where users understood the format. No further jokes came from this comment thread where they commented “what is hummus”.
I’m the one who wrote that comment and the joke train continued on from it up until everything was removed by the mods. 🤦♂️
Hamas is a terrorist organization currently engaged in a war with Israel. They are the defacto rulers of the Gaza strip, and most of their members are in Gaza. However, many Hamas leaders live outside of Gaza.
They are listed as a terrorist organization by the US, Canada, UK, the EU, and more.
Their charter declares their goals to be the violent destruction of Israel, the establishment of an Islamic caliphate in the land of Palestine, and killing all Jews worldwide.
Their charter doesnt state that. It was changed in 2017. Their current charter clearly states their conflict isn’t with Jewish people.
“Palestine is a land that was seized by a racist, anti-human and colonial Zionist project that was founded on a false promise (the Balfour Declaration),”
The Islamic Resistance Movement “Hamas” is a Palestinian Islamic national liberation and resistance movement. Its goal is to liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project. Its frame of reference is Islam, which determines its principles, objectives and means. “
https://palwatch.org/storage/documents/hamas new policy document 010517.pdf
Netanyahu helped Hamas get their funding so the moderate party in Palestine would get less support
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/israel-gaza-netanyahu/675597/
Bruh, how can you say that and not immediately start thinking “maybe i shouldnt”???
https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas-Charta
The 2017 edit of it is just propaganda. Otherwise they wouldnt keep killing civiliansBecause the narrative that Israel is white colonizers oppressing poor brown locals is the predominant American liberal narrative for how power is structured everywhere in the world, even if it is of course never that simple.
Found the Hamas propagandist.
They are listed as a terrorist organization by the US, Canada, UK, the EU, and more.
Not hard to see how we are clearly taking sides in this conflict. Sickening.
Palestine and Israel are both awful to each other, and here we pretend to make Israel the good guys and Palestine the bad. As if that’s even possible to say which is worse.
https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas
Hamas (Arabic: حماس, acronym of Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya, Arabic: حركة المقاومة الاسلامية, literally “Islamic Resistance Movement”) is a Palestinian Sunni Islamist militant group. It was started in 1987 during the First Intifada by Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi as the Gaza branch of the Muslim Brotherhood organization in Egypt. In the 2006 Palestinian election, Hamas got 74 of 132 seats in parliament and controls the Gaza Strip. The group wants to build a Palestinian state based on Sharia law in the area that is now Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip. Hamas does not recognize the State of Israel.[2] it has been designated a terrorist organization by many countries due to its attacks, including suicide bombings and rocket attacks.
Depending on the narrator, they’re either freedom fighters or terrorists. The question should be why and how does Hamas exist? They didn’t pop up one moment and started killing people.
If you’re really interested, read some different sources or listen to some podcasts from both sides and you’ll have a bigger sense of things.
or listen to some podcasts from both sides
And listen to podcasts from a third party. Try to find sources that are as objective as possible.
Yes, I have Podcast addict and just subscribed to various news podcasts, some European, some American, British, middle eastern, …
I still have to find one Israeli source to see their point of view and one Palestinian or pro Palestinian.
It’s an organization that controls the palestinian people. It’s a government, but there hasn’t been an election in seventeen years.
That’s about all I know
Well sorta, technically they’re only the adhoc government of occupied Gaza.
A leftist terrorist organization hell-bent on worldwide Jew and further down the road complete genocide
Basically what right wingers think antifa is, except in Palestine
the meanest guy in the prison yard
Hamas is a red herring that has it’s importance exemplified in western media by the zionist apartheid regime of Israel.
no one believes you
Not in this circlejerk they don’t.
I do
