this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2023
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Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders said Sunday he doesn’t know that a ceasefire is possible in the Israel-Hamas war with “an organization like Hamas” involved.

“I don’t know how you can have a ceasefire, (a) permanent ceasefire, with an organization like Hamas, which is dedicated to turmoil and chaos and destroying the state of Israel,” Sanders told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” Sunday.

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[–] [email protected] 123 points 1 year ago (106 children)

I don't think peace is possible when one side is holding the other in an open air prison and giving them only the amount of calories needed to not die (after the war started even that was suspended)

[–] [email protected] 69 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Stop calling it a prison, prisons are for convicted criminals, Palestinian's only crime is being Palestinian. These were open air concentration camps, they are now open air extermination camps

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

prisons are for convicted criminals,

Always?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (5 children)

No one said the conviction is justified, but yes, convicted.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Have you ever seen Gaza? I thought it looked more like a city.

Is "open air concentration camps" now a code word for dense urban city?

image

Honestly this looks like a pretty nice city to me.

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (11 children)

Does that change anything?

Hamas is a terrorist organization with strong ties to Iran. We've already seen what happens when terrorist groups destabilize countries and take control. Syria is an ongoing testament to that. So is Afghanistan

Are the Israeli Government's sins the reason why Hamas is in power? The extent is arguable, but it would be a lie to outright say "no".

But... does that change anything?

Hamas is the power in Gaza. Any form of concessions that don't involve the destruction of Hamas will be considered a win because the Palestinian people have been held in an open air prison for decades. And that will just lead to Hamas becoming more powerful.

If someone was abused horrifically as a child and decided to get a gun and take it out on others, what do you do? In a just world, you get them the help that they need. But in any world, the first thing you do is take the gun away before they can hurt anyone else.

What that means in this situation? I don't know. Short of external military intervention, the Israeli government is not going to stand down. And I for one don't want the US and NATO to fuck around in yet another middle eastern country for another two decades only to leave it considerably worse than we found it.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You realize Israel is controlling the prison in reality, right?

Hamas doesn't shoot Palestinians that go to far off the coast, Israel does.

Hamas didn't erect a huge border wall around Gaza, Israel did.

Hamas doesn't control the supply of food, water, and goods into Gaza. Israel does.

Who controls Gaza?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (10 children)

WRT the wall at least:

Hamas's goal from securing power in 2007 has been rejecting the two state solution and destroying Israel leading to many many attacks since then so, maybe securing the border isn't an insane idea? I mean, fuck all good the wall did recently but still.

Hamas doesn't control the supply of food, water, and goods into Gaza. Israel does.

Slightly amend that one, Egypt also supports the blockade. That being said, it's not the fault of all the civilians in Gaza that people voted in 2007 to let a terrorist organization take over and things went poorly because of it. This blockade needs to end. Humanitarian aid needs to be able to get to Gaza.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I'm not going to get fully bogged down in the semantics, but Israel still basically controls the Egypt border.

The US forced a vote, didn't like the outcome, attempted to coup Hamas, and failed. Also, if Hamas is so bad (which they are in many respects), why does Israel fund them and explicitly has a policy of only interacting with them as being the legitimate government?

Easy, they want an unsympathetic enemy that does not want peace. They want to continue the project of taking the rest of Israel for the ethnostate.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

At least for #2, you might want to do more research into why hamas doesn't have prisons in Gaza..

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Remember people,

Hamas != Palestina

Putin's mafia != Russia

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Also with regard to Russians. I work retail, and lately have more and more Russians come in, speaking broken English, very polite, always respectful.

It both warms and breaks my heart to see them. It’s so sad that they’ve left their homeland, but it’s inspiring that they decided they’d rather move across the planet than be puppets to a warlord so deranged as to conscript soldiers.

They always seem a little sheepish. Always like “sorry, sorry” for asking me questions, for taking up my time. I just want to tell them “I’m so glad you’re here! You’re a blessing to me! Stop apologizing please!” but unless they come out and tell me their situation it’s not my place to comment on it.

We’ve got this dim view of “draft dodgers”, but the reality is it takes courage to say no to one’s own government, to put oneself in danger to avoid becoming an armed puppet of someone else’s ambition.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You know, I wonder how many people would support guerilla tactics if they were living in the fucking hunger games.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Murdering civilians isn't 'guerilla tactics'. It's not even a useful form of terrorism.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Seems to be working for Bibi.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

Let me rephrase that - it's not a useful form of terrorism for achieving reasonable goals. If one's goal is to perpetuate a pointless and bloody sectarian conflict so that one can hold onto power over their own people even as the overall prosperity of the nation suffers, I guess murdering civilians is useful.

When killing is mostly or entirely random, all that happens is that the civilian population at large begins to consider themselves (rightly) under threat, and the conflict is perpetuated by mutual fear and spite rather than fear being a means to leverage negotiations or achieving policy.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Honestly probably the same amount of people who'd support carpet bombing Florida if they started firing missiles into neighbouring states.

If you only imagine yourself on one side it's easy to say the other one is evil but live isn't that simple really

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