this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2025
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The rank stench of cowardice emanates from the rotting husk of the liberal body politic as it stumbles around, diseased and dying.

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[–] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Why do you equate Palestine with Hamas? Hamas is (nowadays barely) in control of a fraction of the Palestinian people. There is also the PA, there is also the massive diaspora and refugee population. I don't see any reason why a discussion about a Palestinian state should be centred around what Hamas has to say. So, no, it is not written in some "Palestinian constitution" that all Jews must be killed. That's just misinformation and dangerous conflation.

Hamas is actually doing a better job at not conflating Jews and Israel than you are doing at not conflating Palestinians and Hamas. Their updated charter from 2017 removed the antisemitic passages you quote and specifically made the distinction between Jews and Israel:

"Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity. Hamas rejects the persecution of any human being or the undermining of his or her rights on nationalist, religious or sectarian grounds. Hamas is of the view that the Jewish problem, antisemitism and the persecution of the Jews are phenomena fundamentally linked to European history and not to the history of the Arabs and the Muslims or to their heritage."

On the other hand, Israeli politics and law does not make this kind of distinction. The right-wing and far-right wing that have been in power since Oslo (with the brief exception of Ehud Barak) have acted entirely under the old Likud slogan that "Between the sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty." This has been codified in Basic Law and has been made into "facts on the ground" through 30 years of systematic settlement of 700,000 settlers on the best land of the West Bank that are not going anywhere.

Which is why also your statement that "without the Hamas, there would already have been a peace which really earned to be called so" is so (I'm sorry) ridiculous Palestine is an excellent example of a natural experiment: one area Hamas, another area no Hamas. Guess what is going on in the no Hamas area? Do you call that ...peace? Without Hamas, Israeli occupation has a clear face: APARTHEID and slow motion ethnic cleansing. If anything, the honest thing to say would be to acknowledge that the biggest failure of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority is that it gave away everything to the Israelis and failed to stop colonization the way that Hamas actually did. Hamas rose in popularity in Gaza precisely because Israel clipped the wings off of the Oslo process and killed off the credibility of the PA.

It is in this particular context that the slogan "from the river to the sea Palestine will be free" takes a very specific ANTI-APARTHEID meaning. If the Israeli policy of settlement has killed off the possibility of a two state solution, then there is only the one state solution left. And to quote John Kerry: "if the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic". And since for any civilized person democracy is non-negotiable, whereas ethnic purity is not, the vision of a "free Palestine" is the same as a free South Africa, a country where whites, coloured and blacks have equal rights. Free Palestine, means democracy and human rights for all people living between "the river and the sea" regardless of ethnicity or religion.

Note that once you get to the point of realizing the horror of Israeli Apartheid, you have to also recognize that Germany has a utterly SHAMEFUL policy of effectively outlawing BDS (exclusion from public funding of participating entities, surveillance, refusal of public space), an explicitly peaceful, non-violent, and pro-democratic campaign endorsed by moderate Palestinian Civil Society. BDS was exactly the leverage that cracked South African apartheid. So, there's a policy issue you could pursue in your own country if you actually care about peace...

[–] Isa@feddit.org 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Why do you equate Palestine with Hamas?

I don't. Or at least: that was not my intent. For the rest I might respond later, don't have the spoons left to read much. Palestine without Hamas is fine for me. Yet I had a problem in the past with people protesting against Israel and citing the Hamas. One other user here declared more or less to stand behind the Hamas. I mentioned it not in the intent to equate it with Palestine (which I really don't) but to point out, with what I have trouble (not Palestine on its own). Sorry, if I offended you. More later (maybe).

[–] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

No worries. I think I'm spooned out too. So let's just disengage.

[–] Isa@feddit.org 1 points 2 days ago

Let's do that. And again: thanks for the time and effort you spent herein so far. I really appreciated it! (And I will continue to think about it and my position in this all.)