Ed Sheeran/Macklemore

[WallyHilloughby]

what are your thoughts on this whole debacle?
quite frankly I’m sick and tired of artists using concerts etc as some political forum

"There are many people gay in the Gaza Strip, and they are in Hamas also. If you are gay, you should be hiding. It’s so hard. I was so scared. Scared from everything you know? Scared of getting hit, of getting kidnapped. I was so afraid. I was afraid Hamas would find out I was gay."

When Abdul was 17, Hamas caught him having sex with his boyfriend, imprisoning him for three days.

"They put me in a tiny room that was two-by-two meters. They wouldn’t let me sleep or go to the bathroom inside. There was no food. They would torture me so badly,"

"Sometimes, they would tie my feet up and beat them with a stick. After that, every few years, they would arrest me and torture me in the same way."

Over the course of five years, Abdul says Hamas would kidnap him off of the streets, torture him, and then rerelease him.

Finally, at 22, they let him go for the last time. He was forced to take an oath on the Quran that he wouldn't "be gay again."

For two years, Abdul lived on the streets until he managed to scrape together enough money to escape into Egypt and then make his way to Turkey.

Clueless western idiots know best though

There's a middle ground between siding with Israel and uncritically standing for a society that treats gay and queer Palestinians like shit, and indeed where a lesbian hostage had to hide her sexuality for fear of being even further mistreated if it were discovered. It's not a binary choice, so that's a strawman. They could eg protest against Israeli military actions whilst noting as a queer group that Palestinians themselves mistreat the gay people in their midst. But they don't.

Oh no, you need to read the 46 pages and then decide whether you want to continue to claim that Hamas never ever threw anybody off a building, gay or otherwise.

Because I've read it, and I certainly think it is an interesting choice to go out to bat for them on this point. I would certainly not be claiming that they never did it, when they are clearly capable of and have done far worse.

Are you sure? Bear in mind that absence of evidence isn't the same as evidence of absence.

It’s not ok to murder 1000’s of people.
It’s fine to say this. It’s not antisemitic to think this.
Sitting on the fence about this is fucked up.

Very true

Which is why they are laughable

Same goes for many feminist groups

So it didn't say it.

Gotcha

What makes you think that it was a typo? It's exactly the sort of outlandish claim they make.

It's almost like repeating propaganda.

Here's a roof throwing that did happen though
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn8jg0x5xg8o

i haven’t accused anyone of wanting dead children.

No, I don’t think anything about this war is making any side look outstanding.

I agree.

I flip it. Would it bother you if Hamas won and the Israelis were marched into the sea and they were free to wage war on Jews world wide? As per their charter. They have no wish to finish up and live in peace if they win.

Of course it would bother me. I don’t want Hamas to “win”. I want a peaceful solution, not the defeat of Israel. I don’t think the world would allow what you describe to happen. Israel has powerful allies, particularly the US. And I don’t believe that it is acceptable to carry out genocide to prevent future bloodshed.

Islamic terrorism is an absolute scourge on the world, for all of us. I don’t think obliterating the Palestinians will stop that.

700,000 is the figure that has been going around twitter/instagram the last couple of days so it probably was someone trying to claim that.

I never claimed that it did.

I asked you if you were sure the sort of people who did the torture and murder described in the document would never throw anyone off a roof.

Bear in mind that that is your claim. You have gone out to bat for a torturing, murdering terrorist group to claim that they have never thrown anyone gay off a roof.

Why are you so sure of that? Do you think it is truly beyond them? That they wouldn't do that kind of thing?

Unfortunately there is no ‘of course’ with that statement now -or ever probably. The stated goal for the Palestinian marchers where I work (at a large Scottish university) is for Palestine to take over all of Israel and send the Jews ‘back to Europe’. So there are plenty of people who absolutely do want Hamas to win and for the Islamic groups of various sorts to control the entire Middle East. ‘From the river to the sea’ doesn’t exactly mean peaceful coexistence.

just like, unfortunately, it’s necessary for me to keep repeating that thousands of dead children is a terrible tragedy as if I don’t say it, people might not know that I think that’s obvious.

Tbf Hamas have done horrendous things, including to Palestinians. If roof throwing is annoying as a trend, there’s plenty of other stuff that could be cited.

At the moment there is no recorded evidence they did despite previous posters presenting it as fact.

Do I think they have, perhaps I don't know . Do they have the potential to do it. Absolutely.
So we are either dealing with facts or not.
But stating it categorically happened as multiple posters have done is not something either of us or them know.

Listen I agree with you there no question about it.
But throwing out unsupported information does not make for a good debate.

But you didn't say you didn't know. You said "Hamas never threw anybody gay off a roof."

You presented that as fact. Are you now admitting that it may not be a fact?

I've never seen any evidence that Hamas specifically have thrown gay people off roofs, and usually assume people saying that are mixing them up with ISIS. The two organisations are different and don't actually get along. I think the Yazidi women who was rescued from Gaza after being enslaved there for years confused some people.

However, this is quite a different thing from saying Hamas definitely don't do that. I think it's fine to tell posters who are making the building claims that we don't categorically know, but that does work both ways.

Documented Methods of Torture

According to reports from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, Gazans held in Hamas facilities face extreme forms of physical and psychological abuse:

Severe Physical Assaults: Detainees are routinely beaten with truncheons, gun butts, rubber hoses, and metal rods. This includes shabeh, where victims are chained upside down or suspended from ceilings for hours.

Punitive Shootings ("Kneecapping"): Armed operatives frequently shoot political opponents or accused individuals in the limbs, knees, or feet to cause permanent disabilities.

Stress Positions & Solitary Confinement: Forcing prisoners into painful, unnatural positions for prolonged periods during interrogations.

Drag Brutality: Dragging individuals through public streets by ropes tied around their necks or attached to moving vehicles.

Not to mention plain old gun shot to back of head. Can see why someone would be trying to argue Hamas isn't as bad as people say. That they 100% have never dropped anyone off a roof because obviously that would be so out of character for them, not.

You are right.I apologize I'll reword that. I shouldn't have said it like that

There is no recorded evidence that Hamas has thrown people off a roof. But there is evidence that there was a fake story of them doing so.

They've done them mostly to other Palestinians, since that's who they have most access to. The overwhelming majority of Hamas victims are Palestinian. I don't doubt they'd be glad to expand their catalogue, but there's only so many Thai farm workers they've had the opportunity to behead.

Thank you.

I can't say that I would personally defend Hamas from accusations of throwing people off a roof even if I knew that a video was misattributed. Because yeah, they probably have.

And I understand that,
It's honestly not a defense I have condemned them and their atrocities on so many threads here.
It was just because it was presented as fact to scorn and mock gay people who support Palestine.

To be clear I don’t scorn and mock gay people who have a personal viewpoint. Of course they could and should.

I very, very much despair at an organisation called Queers for Palestine with some sort of a rainbow Palestinian flag. Because as a political organisation it makes no sense. You can’t fight for queer rights in the framework of Palestine. If they all showed up in Palestine tomorrow they wouldn’t be welcome and it’s just an odd combination of two unrelated issues.

im genuinely exhausted with how impossible it is to be part of any sort of activism without it circling back to Palestine. I am involved in abortion rights protests and every single one of them has involved people waving Palestinian flags for 3 years now. Why? Abortion is super illegal in Palestine.

I have taken my children to support the Pride March for a decade now. It’s also now filled with Palestinian flags. Why? They aren’t the same fight and while people might support both issues it’s unreasonable to expect everyone must.

The problem with intersectionality is that it leaves out everyone who doesn’t fit into the overlap in the Venn diagram.

The stated goal for the Palestinian marchers where I work (at a large Scottish university) is for Palestine to take over all of Israel and send the Jews ‘back to Europe’.

Can I ask what the demographics of these people are? Are they Muslims, white British, mixed?