Reply #113: I don't have to put denouncing Hamas before all other priorities [View All]

[Ken Burch]

in order to prove I care about Palestinian rights.

And it's not about avoiding hard choices. I'm not sparing myself anything in rejecting your argument that Hamas justifies the Occupation or accepting your delusion that the Occupation can free Palestinians from Hamas(which, as you know, it can't).

I can't place most of the blame on Hamas, as you would like, without giving up all humane values. You want people to obsess about "Hamas, Hamas, Hamas", and to act as if there was no reason that they emerged, because your whole agenda is to let the Israeli government off the hook and to keep the Occupation going forever.

And my criticism is of the Israeli government, not "Israelis". Criticism of the Israeli government is not a collective attack on the Israeli people, and you know it. The Israeli government is simply a group of politicians, and is no more deserving of special protection from criticism than anybody else.

Hamas are bastards, but only ending the Occupation can get rid of them. The IDF can't do it, and the IDF can never be the liberators of the Palestinian people. Had the Israeli government not started its pointless campaign to humiliate Arafat by putting him under siege in Ramallah, Hamas would have gained no support at all. What the IDF did there proves the point I've repeatedly made: that every time the Israelis insist on trying for "peace through victory" they just end up creating a worse enemy. Why, after all this time, can you still not see that? And why can you STILL not see that crushing Hamas militarily(which we both know would have to mean massive civilian casualties)can only lead to something worse than Hamas?

I want Hamas gone. But what you insist on can't get rid of them, unless it is with something worse. It's impossible for Palestinians to be made moderate through humiliation. That doesn't work anywhere, anymore.

I have often adjusted my point of you, it's just that I don't accept yours. You are not infallible on this, shira.

I don't have to accept the "it's all Hamas' fault" problem to prove I'm not tied to a "narrative".

And it's the settlements, which aren't in Jerusalem, but on stolen West Bank land, that I oppose. Only West Jerusalem has any right to be held by Israel. They don't need the eastern part.