Do lots of people support Hamas?

As I said I'm not going to derail the thread so I'll have to agree to disagree with you on the Irish stuff.

How do Israel try to target the leadership of Hamas? According to lots of posters on these boards who are sympathetic with Israel the leadership are living in luxury in Qatar? Over the weekend information emerged on the AI the IDF uses to choose targets which suggest the bombing is not well targeted. A place will be bombed if there's intelligence of one Hamas fighter even if that means killing dozens of civilians. The civilian casualties reflect this.

I think the “ not saying something “ applies when someone is very vocal about condemning Israeli atrocities but says nothing about Hamas atrocities.
I don’t think it’s “ fascist” to think that silence can be revealing.

I would have gone on a peace March but I did not to because of

1. the celebrations in the street near where I live after October 7th
2. the tearing down of hostage posters
3. the refusal by people I knew going to the marches to mention the reality of what happened on Oct 7th - instead they wanted to deflect and talk about Israel .

People I know who went in the marches said it was peaceful etc which is great .. but there was a lot of mumbled obsfucation when I asked what the chanting was meant to imply and what Israel should do to prevent another attack.

So I decided not to go. I’ve no doubt most of the thousands who went are well meaning. But I’ve also no doubt that Hamas is delighted with the PR from the marches

@ohforheavenssakedearcomeonnow I'd even dispute that there are a few.
Not saying something does not equate to support for a terrorist organisation. That is a fascist way to think.

But if there are individuals or posts you suspect, you should report them.

There is a reason you did not directly reply to my post as I actually said:
"And there are a few on MN but whom are very careful to hide it."

A FEW.

Not all.

@ohforheavenssakedearcomeonnow people on the MN boards are not pro-Hamas, they are disgusted at what Israel is doing to Palestinians as well as what Hamas did to Israelis. If you look back through threads, at the beginning everyone was adding "I do not support Hamas" at the end of every single comment, lest they be smeared (as you are doing) a Hamas supporter. In time adding this has trailed off, but does not mean they support Hamas.

I guess as people like you are so keen still to smear them with this ridiculous accusation they still have to be adding it on there.

People are calling for peace, they are calling out war crimes by Israel, as highlighted by the United Nations, Amnesty and more. These do not equate for support for Hamas.

I'm not saying support for Hamas does not exist at all, but attempting to smear people calling for peace as a Hamas supporter is a cheap shot and a lie in 99.999% of cases.

Calling for peace does NOT equal support for Hamas. Although I can see it is a tempting excuse for you and others to try to stop people talking about what Israel are doing. To say "look over there, they support terrorists" when they are just asking for war crimes and collective punishment to stop.

I'm sure you do.

But the fact is PIRA failed and, if a border poll goes Provisional Sinn Féin's way in future, it still won't be anything you could attribute to PIRA itself.

Several of their own highly significant members already admitted PIRA failed and were defeated anyway.

We were saying the armed struggle’s failed, it can’t win. The jails are filling up, people are dying left, right and centre and the British are getting the better hand on us.

Obviously we knew in our hearts that we were deeply, deeply infiltrated at a very high level.

“The armed struggle had to stop. We’d dump weapons, call the ceasefire, and then go into talks."

• Frankie Quinn, senior member of the PIRA's East Tyrone brigade, one of the deadliest of PIRAs cells.

"The attrition rate was just so appalling.

The SAS, the British intelligence services were obviously in a position to intercept most operations.

It was absolutely clear that we were losing if we hadn’t already lost the war and that it was time to cash in the chips.”

IRA director of intelligence Kieran Conway

PIRA member John Crawley, an ex-US Marine before joining PIRA, asserted:

"It was a defeat for the Republican Movement, a complete military and ideological defeat across the board that opened up career paths for certain members of the leadership, but left us ideologically destroyed."

Crawley also described the British as "masters at counter-insurgency".

PIRAs violence massively delayed any united Ireland. Surveys show that the more they murdered, the more people resisted it. Hume noted it too.

That's the point - the Belfast Agreement was only possible because PIRA was defeated. It was the British Government’s aim all along to achieve that and push Provisional Sinn Féin to the negotiation table which is why they saved the lives of Provo leaders.

Israel has a different aim - they kill leaders of Palestinian terrorist groups.

Political settlements are NOT possible without a successful security process.

Demoralising terrorist groups leads to a decline in support too. Hamas are nowhere near this yet.

Well I can see that - but lots of posters just use any thread title as an excuse to post the same points about Israel. This thread has a different focus .

No I wasn’t saying that about Palestinians. OF COURSE they can’t say how they feel about the terrorists who control the region they live in . They are living in fear of Hamas . If you look back at the original post you will see it is about how many are Hamas supporters on the London marches etc .

@Limeandsodaontherocks I don't see how you can consider one without considering the other TBH.

To answer the question.

Yes. Lots do.

And there are a few on MN but whom are very careful to hide it.

However, there are 4 or 5 main Pro Palestinian posters extremely active on the conflict boards and they probably keep changing their names so it looks like they have support. Anyway, if you go through their posts - easy to do - just open up a thread in a browser and hit Ctrl and F together and type in their user name, you will see all their posts and see a pattern and zero condemnation for Hamas. They engage in extreme whataboutery about Israel and how they have treated Gazans badly for 75 years and therefore Israel had it coming. They also pop up on threads where obviously Jewish people are discussing concerns about Anti- Semitism.

These are the Hamas supporters. Easy to spot. I know who these posters are. Edited

BTW I don’t think it’s ok to avoid mentioning the terrible things Israel has done - but that is for another thread I think?

@Limeandsodaontherocks I was referring to Palestinian support of Hamas, and not to people on MN.

But if you are somehow implying that it is ok to oppress all Palestinians on the basis of what they don't say, then we will never agree.

marvellous ceiling -“ WTF does "support" even mean. How do you even measure "support".”

I take “support” to mean “agree with Hamas’ aims and actions” .

You can measure this by looking at what people say / do . But you can also make a judgement based on what people won’t say .

People on here who are determined to avoid any reference to the atrocities of Hamas are either supportive of Hamas or are “useful idiots” unwittingly supporting terrorists.

Sadly this is correct. I live in north west London. The day after the attacks (so before any kind of retaliation by Israel) I passed a car flying a large Palestinian flag out of the back window. That person clearly was celebrating Hamas’s actions. We have to come to terms with the fact that a sizeable group of people in this country as well as worldwide are supportive of the actions of murderous antisemites. What we do about it, I don’t know.

Not new by any means.

It appears you missed the fact I was talking about Provisional Sinn Féin and Provisional IRA aka the Provos.

The Provos weren't around at the time in that link. 🤦‍♂️

PIRA/PSF was part of an international terrorist network that included Libya, Iran, ETA, FARC, Hamas and so on. They even trained together.

To counterbalance your wee link, the Godfather of the Israel Defence Force was an Irish man who was an officer in the British Army.

And was friends with Netanyahu's father. Also buried in Israel with his wife and next to the soldiers he commanded.

John Henry Patterson.

Mural still up near Shankill Road, Belfast.

Absolutely right. My range of experience is drawn from personal experience of terrorist groups, their apologists, people who were actual practitioners in security agencies against PIRA (some I know and am related to) as well as academic experts (Rogelio Alonso is one example).

Double speak is very prevalent with sneaking regarders. An equivocal condemnation is prevalent too and this isn't what it first sounds like either. Unequivocal condemnations are always much clearer, not ambiguous and leaves zero doubt.

I hate to break this to you !

The newly released MI5 files (Terrorists plotted death of Bevin, May 22) further confirm historians' belief that Jewish nationalist groups fighting the British in Mandatory Palestine in the 1940s regarded themselves as "the Zionist Sinn Fein".

Both Menachem Begin and Avraham Stern looked to the Irish struggle. The nom de guerre of Yitzhak Shamir, the future Israeli prime minister, was "Michael" - after Michael Collins. Shamir studied Irish republican literature while Stern translated PS O'Hegarty's The Victory of Sinn Fein into Hebrew.

https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2003/may/23/guardianletters

https://jweekly.com/1996/12/13/history-echoes-from-londonderry-hills-to-jerusalem/

To answer the question.

Yes. Lots do.

And there are a few on MN but whom are very careful to hide it.

However, there are 4 or 5 main Pro Palestinian posters extremely active on the conflict boards and they probably keep changing their names so it looks like they have support. Anyway, if you go through their posts - easy to do - just open up a thread in a browser and hit Ctrl and F together and type in their user name, you will see all their posts and see a pattern and zero condemnation for Hamas. They engage in extreme whataboutery about Israel and how they have treated Gazans badly for 75 years and therefore Israel had it coming. They also pop up on threads where obviously Jewish people are discussing concerns about Anti- Semitism.

These are the Hamas supporters. Easy to spot. I know who these posters are.

@DownNative so you're basically saying that all civilians should be treated as terrorists. Rightyo. We will never agree.

You're also ignoring every hostile action that Israel takes towards Palestine, every punitive racist measure, every land grab, that their settlers attack them on a daily basis, unpunished, all the horrific things IDF do to innocent children and that they restrict Gazan's calories to the minimum, they've admitted to harvesting their ORGANS without consent. What do you make of THESE things?

Let's oppress an entire people, steal their land and manufacture consent to get rid of them and their land on the basis that some of them "support" a terrorist organisation. WTF does "support" even mean. How do you even measure "support". Even more ethically dubious to dictate that any one person expressing a one off opinion that sympathises with Hamas, they are now a "terrorist" - send them to jail, okey dokey. By all means prosecute civilians that play an active role in Hamas. But NO it's not ok to oppress an entire people on this basis. NO.

I'm sorry to say but your reasoning to me sounds like the ramblings of a fascist dictator that wants an easy excuse to oppress an entire people and doesn't give a shit about them.

Ok I disagree with an awful lot of what you're saying. The three demands you mention will be pretty much covered if a border poll goes their way. And Sinn Féin is the biggest political party north and south at the moment so they're hardly failing politically.

But I don't want to derail the thread any further so I'm going to leave it at that.

I am in London and this was my experience in the first couple of days before Israel started intense bombing too

Also I agree with what you say about some users too

The tearing down of hostage photos also suggests a level of support for Hamas .

No, the original poster was incorrect.

PIRA never in all the decades fought for prisoner releases. 🤦‍♂️

PIRA in all the decades never fought for a border poll granted only by the relevant UK Minister. In fact, PIRA always opposed this as it meant accepting the UK was sovereign! 🤦‍♂️

That border poll doesn't even fit PIRAs definition of self-determination for the Irish people as a whole either. They never fought for TWO separate polls with the southern one subject to the Northern one. 🤦‍♂️

So, what was PIRAs actual goals all along?

1. Northern Ireland out of the UK. Didn't happen.

2. UK Government out of Northern Ireland with zero powers. Didn't happen.

3. Complete withdrawal of the British Army. Didn't happen either.

As far as PIRA was concerned, failure to achieve these aims was defeat.

The Belfast Agreement was possible because PIRA was defeated. Its not for nothing Seamus Mallon stated that the Belfast Agreement was "Sunningdale for slow learners"!

The slow learners being the Provos who opposed the central core of it and Anglo-Irish Agreement only to accept it in 1998! 🤦‍♂️

In the end, PIRA achieved NONE of their long held key core demands. And the British Government extended a golden bridge as per Sun Tzu's Art Of War which the British Army still uses to this day.

What I am is a Catholic Unionist and what you attempted was a fallacy where you try to point to bias. Unfortunately for you, any particular bias doesn't necessarily mean a person is wrong. That's why it's a waste of time trying it. 🤦‍♂️

Do lots of people support Hamas?

Evidence suggests yes if social media and the news outlets are what you go by. Plus various iffy celebrities and politicians too.

However I genuinely get the impression that both in the UK and abroad the majority of people don't support Hamas and want rid of them as much as Israel. However this doesn't actually mean they support Israel either. Most people just don't like terrorism or think anything justifies what happened on the 7th October and the taking of hostages.