I understand why they are so set on destroying Hamas

[FebruaryOnMyMind]

Having seen the stories of the women and girls raped at the festival (reportedly over their dead friends bodies) and the people taken off as hostage; I understand why Israel want to destroy Hamas. They have said that Hamas militants are dead men. They have said that they will go after them. The worst killing of Jewish people since the Holocaust and their 9/11 with death toll of over 1300 people.

The story of the women at the Music and Peace festival is here -

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12623023/Israeli-girls-raped-friends-bodies-Hamas-terrorists-carried-second-Holocaust-British-relatives-reveal-condemn-celebrated-atrocities-Gaza-Iran-London.html

Yet some people celebrated when the killings of Jewish people (they were from many different countries) at the festival was announced.

I feel sadness for everything going on in the middle east and for all the people who are innocent are are dying. Terrorists need to be stopped.

Pollyputhekettleon I think it's rightist dogma to condemn people who are unable to rise above the appalling conditions in which they are mired.

I think the suffering of the Israelis who have been murdered and brutalised by Hamas militants is terrifying, and heartbreaking. But I'm not surprised by it.

Gosh that would be a terrible right wing dogma. You go point me to whatever nasty person said such a cliche'd thing and I'll have a word.

I'm not surprised by any brutality. I don't know how anyone could be when they observe the ignorance, irrationality, carelessness, dishonesty, emotional manipulation and lack of self control of many if not most posters on one of these threads. And almost no one here has a good 'mired conditions' excuse available! Funny that.

@AngryBird6122 said: "Hamas are not just full of evil terrorists (yes, what they have done is fucking vile) it's also full of everyday family men who have had enough."

This is incredibly naive and shows you don't really have an understanding of the terrorist ideology of Hamas. As @Pollyputhekettleon said, it's a supremacist ideology.

Let me introduce you to the reality of Hamas courtesy of the United Nations.

The UN states Hamas AND the Palestinian Authority use children as soldiers.

"Both the PA and Hamas routinely indoctrinate Palestinian children to aspire to martyrdom through armed confrontations with Israel. According to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), “the PA operates a systematic and institutionalized policy and program to recruit child soldiers/terrorists.”

In its reports to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) on this issue, PMW accused the PA of indoctrinating Palestinian children to admire and emulate terrorists and noted that “The PA openly admits, that the child terrorists are not acting in a vacuum, but rather they consider them to be the PA’s soldiers who the PA has sent to carry out a mission.”
The United Nations below:

"PA television (TV) broadcast quizzes children on songs with “value and meanings” which PA considers expression of Palestinian “national identity.” One of the songs depicts Israel as the “enemy” and encourages armed attacks: “I'm coming with my rifle… I'm coming towards you, my enemy… with cleavers and knives.” (January 2021).

• Official PA TV children’s program commemorated cartoonist Naji al-Ala, by sharing several cartoons encouraging violence among children, including one where Fatima (Palestinian woman cartoon character) presents an AK47 to Handala (the Palestinian refugee cartoon character) and one of her handing rocks to children. (August 2020).

• Fatah Facebook page promotes child soldiers by sharing video of Jordanian boy in military uniform holding slingshot and rifle. He wants to “shoot Jews” who killed terrorist Omar Abu Laila (killed Israeli soldier, stole his weapon and shot to death Israeli father of 12). (February 2020).

• Hamas TV children’s program interviews young children dressed in military fatigues. One child says he wants to be an engineer when he grows up “so that I can blow up the Jews.” The child host responds “Keep waging Jihad…when you grow up you will wage resistance against the Jews…” (September 4, 2015).

More from the United Nations:

"In addition, PA and Hamas educational programs routinely portray terrorists as role models and incite children to violence. For example, every year Hamas runs summer camps in which it trains children in military tactics and weapons use.

Likewise, summer camps run by Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) teach children to venerate famous Palestinian martyrs like Abu Jihad, who was responsible for terror attacks in which 125 Israelis were killed.

Therefore, it is no surprise that Palestinian children perpetrate violent attacks against Israelis and participate in violent confrontations with the goal of harming Israeli soldiers and civilians."

There is absolutely NO doubt that Palestinian children ARE taught to hate Israelis. Even worse, they're TRAINED to murder Israelis!

The United Nations have provided in their report more evidence of Palestinian children being used to carry out violent acts.

The United Nations tell us all many Palestinian children express desires to become a Jihadist martyr.

Unfortunately, tragically and sadly these children and teenagers are not like our children due to the Gazan social fabric as asserted by NATO StratCom COE too.

"The 2019 report of the United Nations (UN) Commission of Inquiry on the March of Return border confrontations condemned Israel for using “lethal force against children who did not pose an imminent threat of death or serious injury to its soldiers.” The report then proceeded to list the names of 17 children, aged 11-17 who were killed during the confrontations.

However, at least nine of them were documented to be affiliated with terrorist groups. Many of these expressed a desire to die as martyrs and directly participated in violent incidents close to the security fence. For example:

• M. H. (16): Photos and videos show him at the front lines, sabotaging and breaching the fence. He also was a member of the tire burning unit whose job was to create a smokescreen to help rioters breach the fence and attack Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers.

• Y. A. N. (13): Member of known Hamas family whose father is senior member of Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades. He was with a group of youth attempting to sabotage the border fence. Hamas Supreme Leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hamas Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar attended his funeral.

• I. S. (13): Son of senior Hamas terrorist who was documented throwing stones with a sling shot towards IDF soldiers. According to his mother, the day before his death, he said “I want to go to the [border] and to return as a martyr in the path of Allah.”

• W. S. K. (14): Fatah activist who was documented at the front line of the riots. A day before her death, she told her sister “Maybe this is the last time I have with you. I may return tomorrow as a martyr in the path of Allah.”

• H. J. (14): Participated in Friday border confrontations and told his mother “Allah willing, I’ll become a martyr [shahid] fighting in the path of Allah.”

• M. S. (15): Body was wrapped in Hamas flag at the funeral. According to a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-linked non-governmental organization, he was shot at “approximately 20 meters from the barbed wire fence and 50 meters from the main fence.”

Outside of Gaza, Palestinian children also regularly engage in violent clashes with the Israeli army and perpetrate terror attacks against Israelis. Some recent examples include:

• 13-year-old Palestinian is shot and killed by Israeli soldiers in violent riots in which rioters threw stones at IDF troops and rolled boulders and burning tires into nearby road. A number of Israelis have been killed by Palestinian rock throwers, including soldiers Amit Ben Yigal and Ronen Lubarsky, 64 year-old Alexander Levlovitz and three-year-old A. B..

• 15-year-old Palestinian is killed in clashes with IDF troops during arrests in Al Furwar refugee camp near Hebron (May 2020).

• 17-year-old Palestinian stabs and injures 22-year-old Israeli (January 2020).
• Two teenage Palestinians stab and injure Israeli police officer near Old City of Jerusalem (August 2019).

• 16-year-old Palestinian hurling rocks at passing Israeli vehicles is shot dead by Israeli army (January 2019).

• 17-year-old Palestinian stabs to death 45-year-old Israeli Ari Fuld (September 2018).
UN Watch calls on the Human Rights Council as well as UN human rights officials, including High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet and Rapporteur Michael Lynk, to publicly condemn Palestinian recruitment of child soldiers."

When you're faced with the cold, hard reality that Hamas have trained children and teenagers so well they can kill you.....what do you do?

What is YOUR solution to the conflict?

The reality is this problem is part of Egypt's refusal to allow Palestinian civilians to enter Egypt via Rafah. Other neighbouring Arab States have had problems in the past with their territories then being used to attack Israel. That presents a security problem for them.

Unfortunately, terrorist organisations like Hamas like to ensconce themselves amongst the civilian population, recruit from the local Gazan population, teach them to hate Israelis, train even children to murder Israelis and so on.

The only option is to remove and destroy Hamas. This cannot be done without civilian and Israeli Defence Force personnel deaths alike.

After that, Israel and the West can set about de-Hamasifying Palestinian society in Gaza similar to what was done in West Germany post WW2.

Doing nothing isn't an option.

Let's NOT minimise* *Hamas' members in the way you just did with your naive comment they're "not just full of evil terrorists...also full of everyday family men who have had enough."

A MINORITY* of Gazans oppose Hamas and THAT minority *"full of everyday family men"!

Not the ones who joined Hamas which is a destructive cult.

Hang on, Pollyputhekettleon, you said that being unable to rise above negative life experiences was leftist dogma.

I responded that expecting people to rise above negative life experiences was rightist dogma.

I was responding to your cliche with one of my own.

And you're quite right - given the inability of most posters on here to cope with the vagaries of a relatively privileged Western life, I have no idea why anyone would expect Palestinians to simply 'rise above' the decades of abuse to which they've been subjected.

Yes, these people are supremacists who think the Jews are an inferior race. They only become 'the oppressed' when they've lost a series of wars, impoverished their own region through their own ignorant fanaticism and foolishness, and need to appeal for Western sympathy.

Quote where I said: 'being unable to rise above negative life experiences is leftist dogma'. Go find it and quote it.

It's not a quote, and nor was mine. I was paraphrasing (badly), because I'm cooking! You wrote something to the effect that because not all abused people go on to abuse others, it is leftist dogma to suggest that oppressed people will inevitably respond to their oppressors with violence. That somehow because some individuals are able to overcome their own experiences of abuse, on a collective level, people ought to be able to rise above the abuses inflicted on them. i.e. we're not robots, and our retaliation is not inevitable.

I didn't find your argument persuasive.

This forum is ridiculously combative.

I'm not sure why we expect anything to be other than as it is, tbh.

You don't get to admittedly badly paraphrase what I said into some nasty caricature because 'I'm cooking' and then claim that it's 'this forum' that's ridiculous combative. And all while literally paraphrasing it again, equally badly and, no doubt purely coincidentally, also negatively. Oh but you're cooking, of course, happens to the best of us. Are you absolutely kidding me? People are dying, it's combative shockingly enough, take some responsibility.

It is unsurprising that people who endure brutal collective punishment over decades may respond in horrifying ways.

I think the quality of my initial paraphrasing reflects poorly on me, not you.

However, I don't know why you're upset with how I have subsequently interpreted your argument. You seem to be saying that because other peoples in other times have suffered abuses similar to those inflicted on the Palestinians, the Palestinians should be able to exercise forbearance. I disagree.

I was cooking. It's tea time over here.

I apologise for the offence I caused.

@DownNative - thank you for this! I have seen a vide of Palestinian father instructing his little kid to go and throw a stone at Israeli soldiers. Like, a tiny baby, 3-5 year old. What kind of crap is that?

I think a lot of people in the west support Hamas and "Free Palestine" slogans because they have no idea what is actually behind it. Its the simplistic thinking - Israel oppresses Palestinians, they want to be "free", lest support them. In reality, Hamas is a horrible terrorist organisation, indeed, a cult, that's been brainwashing people of Gaza for years. The are now controlling every aspect of life in Gaza, including healthcare, media and education, and are also responsible for spending aid money - making sure it all goes on weapons and training terrorists. Worst of all, they don't care about Gazans themselves. They do not provide shelters, they do not build desalination plants or power stations, they are happy for its people to live in poverty, brainwashed and full of hate.

And, most of all, they are rabidly antisemitic and their vision of free Palestine is basically a world where Israel does not exist. Where Jewish people do not exist. I have no idea how anyone in their right mind can support this. I especially get weirded out by LGBT+ people supporting Hamas/ Palestine - I mean, you can't be serious? Do you know what they would do to you if you ever set foot in Gaza?...

There's also pictures of Israeli children writing messages on missiles aimed for Gaza. It's all horrific

@localnotail

Those people usually believe that jihadism and Islamic extremism, like riots, are simply 'the language of the unheard'. They're normally materialists, if not atheists, who have no concept of what it is to genuinely be motivated by religious beliefs. Naturally they don't know anything about Islam. They also subscribe to the basic leftist view that people are products of their environment, and that conflict is caused by material factors, by exploitation and oppression.

Then they've been taught a hierarchy of oppression, in which white, rich people are the oppressors and poor, non-white people are the victims. Jews are designated as white in that hierarchy (and of course most of them have no idea that there are Jews of different races anyway...)Then they believe that the Jews simply landed into the Middle East from Europe in the early 20th century, or after WW2, and literally stole the land from the people who had lived there forever.

The LGBT pro-Palestine brigade usually think that the intolerance of homosexuality there is caused by colonialism/imperialism/oppression by whitey. They'll literally tell you the Brits did it and that in the utopia before those perfidious Brits Islamic countries were totally cool with gay people etc. So by their logic you have to abolish Israel (i.e. western imperialism), as well as capitalism, patriarchy and climate change, and then the whole area will be a Pride parade.

@kirinm There is always someone who comes up with "yes, but.." response. I had to google what you said - apparently there was a big controversy over this in 2006 which was widely discussed/ condemned in Jerusalem Post and in the Guardian. No evidence of kids writing on shells during this conflict.

Could I please see evidence of any Arab news source condemning use of children as mini-terrorists in Palestine.

@Pollyputhekettleon there is no worse idiot than a well-meaning idiot...

But it happened in another conflict. I just don't think referring to a 3 year old who is witnessing their home being destroyed to asset that Palestinians are indoctrinated is very sensible.

But in fact, bombing Gaza indiscriminately will radicalise more people and the spiral continues.

@kirinm children should not be involved on either side, and training your kids to deliberately put themselves in situations where they are killed (and brainwashing them that this is a desirable and justifiable goal) is deranged and fucking sick.

You've been and continue to be deeply offensive, but don't apologise. It's good to see light shone on these intellectually dishonest and mealy-mouthed attitudes.

On the issue of LGB and Islam , which has just been raised (and intolerance of other religions as well), I heard a very interesting podcast yesterday. I listen to "The Rest is History" and they have just released a four-parter on the history of Baghdad, which was fascinating. In the original caliphate which built the city there was no religious intolerance and Christians, Jews and Muslims all lived together with equal rights, although the non-Muslims had to pay a special tax. And homosexuality was not a big deal at all, it seems. I realise this is a huge topic but I was pondering when and how things changed in certain Islamic traditions, to the present-day situation?

This long form tweet by an American journalist is very good and well worth the time reading for those interested.

“People ask me all the time if I am "pro-Israel" because I am a Jew who has lived in Israel, and my answer is that being "pro-Israel" or being "pro-Palestine" or being a "Zionist" does not properly capture the nuance of thought most people do or should have about this issue. It certainly doesn't capture mine.

I have a lot to say. I’ve spent the last 72 hours writing, texting, and talking to Israelis, Jews, Muslims, and Palestinians. Much of my reaction is going to piss off people on "both sides," but I am exhausted and hurting and I do not think there is any way to discuss this situation without being radically honest about my views. So I'm going to try to say what I believe to be true the best I can.

Let me start with this: It could have been me.

That's a hard thought to shake when watching the videos out of Israel — the concert goers fleeing across an empty expanse, the hostages being paraded through the streets, the people shot in the head at bus stops or in their cars. I went to those parties in the desert, I rubbed shoulders with Israelis and Arabs and Jews and Muslims, I could have easily accepted an invitation to some concert near Sderot and gone without a care, only to be indiscriminately slaughtered. Or, perhaps worse, taken hostage and tortured.

I don’t believe Hamas is killing Israelis to liberate themselves, nor do I believe they are doing it to make peace. They're doing this because they represent the devil on the shoulder of every oppressed Palestinian who has lost someone in this conflict. They're doing it because they want vengeance. They are evening the score, and acting on the worst of our human impulses, to respond to blood with blood — an inclination that is easy to give in to after what their people have endured. It should not be hard to understand their logic — it is only hard to accept that humans are capable of being driven to this. Not defending Hamas is a very low bar to clear. Please clear it.

It’s not possible to recap the entire 5,000 year history of people fighting over this strip of land in one newsletter. There are plenty of easily accessible places you can learn about it if you want to (and, by the way, many of you should — far too many people speak on this issue with an obscene amount of ignorance, loads of arrogance, and a narrow historical lens focused on the last few decades). But I'll briefly highlight a few things that are important to me.

In my opinion, the Jewish people have a legitimate historical claim to the land of Israel. Jews had already been expelled and returned and expelled again a half dozen times before the rise of the Muslim and Arab rule of the Ottoman Empire. Of course it’s messy because we Jews and Arabs and Muslims are all cousins and descendents of the same Canaanites. But Arabs won the land centuries ago the same way Israel and Jews won it in the 20th century: Through conflict and war. The British defeated the Ottoman Empire and then came the Balfour Declaration, which amounted to the British granting the area to the Jewish people, a promise they’d later try to renege on — all before the wars that have defined the region since 1948.

That historical moment in the late 1940s was unique. After World War II, with many Arab and Muslim states already in existence, and after six million Jews were slaughtered, the global community felt it was important to grant the Jewish people a homeland. In a more logical or just world that homeland would have been in Europe as a kind of reparation for what the Nazis and others before them had done to the Jews, or perhaps in the Americas — like Alaska — or somewhere else. But the Jews wanted Israel, the British had taken to the Zionist movement, the British had conquered the Ottoman Empire which handed them control of the land, and America and Europe didn’t want the Jews. As a result, we got Israel,

The Arab states had already rejected a partitioned Israel repeatedly before World War II and rejected it again after the Holocaust and the end of the war. They did not want to give up even a little bit of their land to a bunch of Jewish interlopers who were granted it all of a sudden by British interlopers who had arrived a hundred years prior. Who could blame them? It had been centuries since Jews lived there in large numbers, and now they wanted to return in waves as secularized Europeans. Many of us would probably react the same way. So, just as humans have done forever, they fought. The many existing Arab states turned against the burgeoning new Jewish state. One side won and one side lost. This is the brutal and broken and violent world we live in, but it is what created the global world order we have now.

You can’t speak about this issue in a vacuum. You can't pretend that it wasn't just 60 years ago when Israel was surrounded on all sides by Arab states who wanted to wipe them off the face of the planet. Despite the balance of power shifting this century, that threat is still a reality. And you can't talk about that without remembering the only reason the Jews were in Israel in the first place was that they'd spent the previous centuries fleeing a bunch of Europeans who also wanted to wipe them off the face of the planet. And then Hitler showed up.

And yet, many Americans only view modern Israel as the "powerful" one in this dynamic. Which is true — they obviously are. It isn't a fair fight and it hasn't been for decades because Israel's government is rich and resourceful, has the backing of the United States and most of Europe, and has an incredibly powerful military. At the same time, Israeli leadership has made technological and military advancements that have further tipped those scales — all while the Israeli government has helped create a resource-thin open air prison of two million Arabs in Gaza.

Conversely, Palestinians are devoid of any real unified leadership, and the Arab world is now divided on the issue of Palestine. Israel is unwilling to give the people in Gaza and the West Bank more than an inch of freedom to live. These are largely the refugees and descendents of the refugees of the 1948 and 1967 wars that Israel won. And you can't keep two million people in the condition that those in the Gaza strip live in and not expect events like this.

I'm sorry to say that while the blood on the ground is fresh. The Israelis who were killed in this attack largely have nothing to do with those conditions other than being born at a time when Israel and Jews have the upper hand in this conflict. Some of the victims weren’t even Israeli — they were just tourists. This is why we describe them as “innocent” and why Hamas has only reaffirmed that they are a brutal terror organization with this attack — an organization that I hope is quickly toppled, for the sake of both the Palestinian people and the Israelis. But as someone with a deep love for Israel, with friends in danger and people I know still missing, it breaks my heart to say it but I'm saying it again because it remains perhaps the most salient point of context in a tangled mess full of centuries of context:

You cannot keep two million people living in the conditions people in Gaza are living in and expect peace.

You can't. And you shouldn’t. Their environment is antithetical to the human condition. Violent rebellion is guaranteed. Guaranteed. As sure as the sun rising.

And the cycle of violence seems locked in to self-perpetuate, because both sides see a score to settle:

1. Israel has already responded with a vengeance, and they will continue to. Their desire for violence is not unlike Hamas’s — it’s just as much about blood for blood as any legitimate security measure. Israel will “have every right to respond with force." Toppling Hamas — a group, by the way, Israel erred in supporting — will now be the objective, and civilian death will be seen as necessary collateral damage. But Israel will also do a bunch of things they don't have a right to. They will flatten apartment buildings and kill civilians and children and many in the global community will probably cheer them on while they do it. They have already stopped the flow of water, electricity, and food to two million people, and killed dozens of civilians in their retaliatory bombings. We should never accept this, never lose sight that this horror is being inflicted on human beings. As the group B’Tselem said, “There is no justification for such crimes, whether they are committed as part of a struggle for freedom from oppression or cited as part of a war against terror.” I mourn for the innocents of Palestine just as I do for the innocents in Israel. As of late, many, many more have died on their side than Israel's. And many more Palestinians are likely to die in this spate of violence, too.

Unfortunately, most people in the West only pay attention to this story when Hamas or a Palestinian in Gaza or the West Bank commits an act of violence. Palestinian citizens die regularly at the hands of the Israeli military and their plight goes largely unnoticed until they respond with violence of their own. Israel had already killed an estimated 250 Palestinians, including 47 children, this year alone. And that is just in the West Bank.

2. Every single time Israel kills someone in the name of self-defense they create a handful of new radicalized extremists who will feel justified in wanting to take an Israeli life in retribution sometime in the future. Half of Gaza’s two million people are under the age of 19 — they know little besides Hamas rule (since 2006), Israeli occupation, blockades, and rockets falling from the sky. The suffering of these innocent children born into this reality is incomprehensible to me. They will suffer more now because of Hamas’s actions and Israel’s response, all through no fault of their own.

There is no way out of this pattern until one side exercises restraint or leaders on both sides find a new solution. Israelis will tell you that if Palestinians put their guns down then the war would end, but if Israel put their guns down they'd be wiped off the planet. I don't have a crystal ball and can’t tell you what is true. But what I am certain of is that every time Israel kills more innocents they engender more rage and hatred and recruit more Palestinians and Arabs to the cause against them. There is no disputing this.

So, why did this happen now?

I'm not sure how to answer that question except to say it was bound to happen eventually. It was a massive policy and intelligence failure and Netanyahu should pay the price politically — he is a failed leader. Iran probably helped organize the attack and the money freed up by the Biden administration's prisoner swap probably didn't help the situation, either. Israel's increasingly extremist government and settlers provoking Palestinians certainly didn't help. Nor has going to the Al-Aqsa mosque and desecrating it. Nor do blockades and bombings and indiscriminate subjugation of a whole people. Nor does refusing to talk to non-terrorist leaders in Palestine. Nor does illegally continuing to expand and steal what is left of Palestinian land, as many Jews and Israelis have been doing in the 21st century despite cries from the global community to stop. A violent response was predictable — in fact, plenty of people did predict it.

Israel is forever stuffing these people into tinier and tinier boxes with fewer and fewer resources. But if you want to blame Israeli leaders for continuing to expand and settle land that does not belong to them (as I do), then you should also spare some blame for Palestinian leaders for repeatedly not accepting a partitioned Israel during the 20th century that could have led to peace (as I do).

Please also remember this: Hamas is still an extremist group. The Palestinian people do not have a government or leaders who legitimately represent their interests, and it sure as hell isn't Hamas. Will some Palestinians cheer and clap at the dead, or spit on them as they are paraded through Gaza? Yes they will. And they have. Many will also mourn because they loathe Hamas and know this will only make things worse. This is no different than how some Americans cheer at the dead in every single war we've ever fought. It's no different than the Israelis who set up lawn chairs to watch their government bomb Palestine and cheer them on, too. This doesn't mean Palestinians or Israelis or Americans are evil — it means some of them are giving in to their violent impulses, and their zealous feelings of righteous vengeance.

Solutions, you ask? I can’t say I have any. If you came here for that, I’m sorry. The two-state solution looks dead to me. A three-state solution makes some sense but feels out of the view of all the people who matter and could make it happen. I wish a one-state solution felt realistic — a world of Israelis and Arabs and Muslims and Jews living side by side with equal rights, fully integrated and defused of their hate, is a version of Israel that I would adore. But it seems less and less realistic with every new act of violence.

Am I pro-Israel or pro-Palestine? I have no idea.

I'm pro-not-killing-civilians.

I'm pro-not-trapping-millions-of-people-in-open-air-prisons.

I'm pro-not-shooting-grandmas-in-the-back-of-the-head.

I'm pro-not-flattening-apartment-complexes.

I'm pro-not-raping-women-and-taking-hostages.

I'm pro-not-unjustly-imprisoning-people-without-due-process.

I'm pro-freedom and pro-peace and pro- all the things we never see in this conflict anymore.

Whatever this is, I want none of it.”

Are you at all familiar with the term "Whataboutery"?

"the technique or practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counter-accusation or raising a different issue."

So, the fact the UN confirmed Hamas AND Palestinian Authority both use children as soldiers is apparently so difficult for you to accept that you had to resort to Whataboutery straight away?

Surely, you must know that is NOT a mature way to respond to a debating argument? 🤔

While I think there are wrongs committed on both sides, there is one important difference in the nature of these wrongs: Armed individuals from Hamas, whose sworn goal is to entirely destroy the entire state of Israel, ran a sophisticated campaign of deliberately killing, raping and abducting Israeli civilians, whereas Israel uses its military force to kill or capture armed individuals from Hamas, despite knowing it cannot avoid also killing civilians.

Firstly you're assuming that the podcast you heard was accurate and unbiased, which is by no means a safe assumption. Secondly you're assuming that situation in a particular place in a particular time period was representative of the norm under Islamic rule. It most definitively was not. Thirdly you're glossing over the 'special tax' paid by the non-muslims. That's jizya, it's not a special tax it's a protection racket. After an Islamic conquest, the locals (if they're deemed people of the book) can either die, convert or submit to Islamic rule.

There's a rather rosy picture being painted by historians of that part of the world at the moment. The purpose is to correct the caricature of all muslims as deranged fanatics, which is fair enough, as far that goes. I think it's important not to get too carried away.

there was no religious intolerance and Christians, Jews and Muslims all lived together with equal rights, although the non-Muslims had to pay a special tax.

We've got different ideas of living together with equal rights.

Crispedia

thanks for sharing that

I have no other sensible comment to make but I found that one of the more interesting posts on this topic