Hamas ‘death culture’ beyond comprehension, says founder’s son

[Twiglets1]

Hamas’s embrace of “death culture” is beyond comprehension for much of the world, Mosab Hassan Yousef, the eldest son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, the founder of the terrorist group, told JNS on Tuesday.

“It is not just the West, it’s also the East. It is beyond understanding that some people are willing to sacrifice human life for political gains, or worse for financial gains. I am a living example of this. My father had to choose between his eldest son and the cause and he chose the cause,” said Yousef.

“There is no parent in the world that would go into a fight that would put their own children in harm’s way. Hamas did the opposite. They went and dragged Israel in the most brutal fight of our time, knowing children would pay the price. This shows you their hypocrisy,” he continued.

“It’s the same game with pro-Palestinians worldwide. Everybody cries for the children on one hand, and on the other they are pushing Palestinian indoctrination which leads to the death of children. And then when children die, they blame Israel,” he added.

www.jns.org/hamas-death-culture-beyond-comprehension-says-founders-son/

I think they could achieve a diplomatic agreement for Hamas to turn over power and military control.

One of the many criticisms, I and others, have of this approach to bomb the shit out of the place is I think its a surefire way to empower extremism and recruitment of more Hamas or other violent extremist terrorist group in the future.

They've been trying to reach a diplomatic agreement all this time ... the sticking point for Hamas is that they won't agree to disarm and surrender control of Gaza. From the BBC on August 2nd:

In the past few days, Arab governments have urged Hamas to disarm and surrender control of Gaza, after a number of Western countries - including France and Canada - announced plans to recognise a state of Palestine. The UK said it would if Israel did not meet certain conditions by September.

Hamas - a proscribed terror group in the US, UK and EU - said in its statement that it could not yield its right to "resistance and its weapons" unless an "independent, fully sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital" was established.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce35nx49reko

A lot of people don’t disagree with the reason Israel went into Gaza - Hamas committed horrendous acts and took hostages back in Gaza as leverage. I’m yet to find anyone in here who is ‘pro-Hamas’ and supportive of that behaviour.

I believe for most people it is the combination of the Israeli government’s rhetoric and actions since the war began that have caused outrage/frustration, especially when combined with the history between the two places and Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the WB. A lot of people think they are showing a total lack of humanity towards Palestinian people (who, remember, aren’t all terrorist) and you can’t blame them for being concerned when that same government actively supports the stealing of Palestinian land and property in the WB. It’s all relevant.

I’ve written this before but withholding aid from an entire population for months should cause outrage. Limiting aid should cause outrage. Firing four shells at a hospital should cause outrage. Denying starvation in Gaza against all evidence should cause outrage. Militarising humanitarian aid should cause outrage. Hamas explain these tactics but they don’t justify them because of the impact on innocent people. The problem is Israel doing these things, not people being outraged.

These are not the actions of a western democracy. Or, at least , they shouldn’t be. They model to people like Putin that the rules don’t really apply anymore so do what you want and they tell the Palestinians that their lives don’t matter. Israel are rightfully protecting their civilians but this shouldn’t mean innocent Palestinians pay the price. They should also remember that their actions will impact how many Palestinians are radicalised: dehumanised people, people who have lost children or parents, people who are told they’re not starving when they are are so much more likely to turn to extremism. That, in turn, means more suffering for Israeli people. Could be in 1 week or it could be in 5 years.

Everyone on here I have interacted with is anti Hamas. But a lot of people are trying to give the innocent people in Gaza a voice. Never has support for innocent civilians been so polarised - hence why we are now saying pro- Israel or pro-Palestinians. Hamas don’t get a look in because we all know they are terrorists. We cannot expect diplomacy or humanity or reason from people who are all set to die for their cause. Unfair as it may be, Israel are the ones who still have to play by the rules when their opponent isn’t because they are better than terrorists. They are a western democracy.

In my opinion, if Israel don’t change their rhetoric and behaviour, the government are endangering Israelis to more extremism from the people of Gaza because they will want to retaliate just as Israel did on 8/10. If you can understand Israel’s want to retaliate, you should be able to understand why the people in Gaza who have lost children, siblings or parents to starvation or bombs might want to too.

Israel’s approach endangers civilians in other war zones (eg Ukraine) because leaders will laugh at all the other western democracies for such blatant double standards.

And most importantly, it hurts the many many innocent people in Gaza who deserve better. All children, in my eyes, should be treated with humanity. At this time, neither the Israeli government or Hamas are showing them much, if any at all.

About the only thing that President Nixon got right was his assertion that Islamism would be one of the greatest threats to the whole world.
And no continent has escaped murderous Islamism since then.
Even way down in Buenos Aires Argentina could not escape an Islamist bombing, causing many deaths.
It was the assassination of President Sadat of Egypt when I was a kid then the Iranian Revolution that tuned me into it.
The fact that Muslims suffer the most for Islamism seems to be a fact that passes the anti Zionists by.
Israel's existence, not her bombing Gaza is the main source of recruitment into Hamas and suchlike.

Another dynamic that Western anti Zionists cannot get their head around.

It's like they do not know what anti Zionism means in raw, undiluted terms.
At least Hamas and even many Muslims , especially from the Middle East are not mealy mouthed in saying that modern Israel should not exist.
Western anti Zionists care about "seeming palatable" too much , so ascribe disingenuous meanings to anti Zionism, when all it means it that one does not think that Israel should not exist and that Jewish people out of all the Abrahamic peoples should not be able to reclaim the land of their provenance, no matter how small.
Meanwhile Christianity has Western Europe, most of Eastern Europe, all of the Americas, the Antipodes, the majority of Sub Saharan Africa and increasing everyday, whether Protestant or Catholic.
Islam has the near and Middle East and minorities there have to be the toughest in the world. It has Chechnya and a large part of Indo Europe. It has cut a swathe through south East Asia , the Sub Continent and increasing the Arabist expression of Islam in West Africa as competitive piety has become a thing there. Somalia and Sudan are theocracies. Niger, etc.

But one little Israel makes so many lose their everloving natural minds!

Why now is Israel becoming hated? If its just as you imply because its Jewish - why has it had such strong support from most western nations and generally favourable opinions from their populations for most of its existance? What might have changed to incur such criticism? It isn't the Jewish majority population because that has always been the case.

Couldn't have anything to do with the starving of 2 million people? The destruction of Gaza, the murder of thousands and thousands of civilians and the worst war crimes recently committed in the last 50 years or so by a supposedly civilised nation.

The singling out and holding Israel to different standards has gone on for a very long time. Why do you think its in the IHRA definition? It long predates this war.
2 million people are not starving. Many more people are and have been starving in other parts of the world.
Israel has not committed the worst war crimes of the last 50 years.
You are perfectly proving the point.

Well, more than 2 million are starving in Sudan and Yemen.

And it would take only a cursory reading of war history to see that there is nothing new under the sun- and in fact people have done far, far worse under the cloak of war than what is happening now.

Lots are not prepared to do that cursory read though. I don't understand the reluctance to understand human nature and history thats often shown here.

It doesn't quite make the point SharonEllis seems to think it does, though, does it? She seems to have been saying people only deplore Israel's actions against Gaza because it's Jewish. Whereas ... everyone normally applauds war crimes?? The world loves a humanitarian crisis unless it is inflicted by Jews? 🤔

Well I'll leave it to the good sense of at least some people who are reading this thread to understand why I'm not even going to reply to that.

Yes those beloved countries of Sudan and Yemen that are welcomed into UEFA and the Eurovision song contest and applauded for their shared values.

You haven't bothered to read up on why Israel is in Eurovision then? And why Yemen and Sudan would not be.

The more pertinent point is the lack of sanctions against Saudi Arabia who are behind the horrors of the Yemen situation and by a very wide margin the UK's biggest arms trade partner.

You could try. What else did you mean by singling out and holding Israel to different standards has gone on for a very long time. Israel has not committed the worst war crimes of the last 50 years?

More people are suffering and dying in Yemen and South Sudan than in Palestine. Those wars have been dragging on for bloody ever. It's appalling. I fail to see that this makes the plight of Palestinians more acceptable somehow, or that Israel should not be held to account for its displacement and blockading of Gaza's population.

Sudanese, Yemeni, Saudi or anything else: you don't get to plead victimhood when you're the one dropping bombs, corralling a population into concentration camps and interfering with aid agencies.

1. Nobody said Sudan and Yemen make the plight of Palestinians acceptable
2. Nobody said Israel should not be held to account for anything it does that is illegal
3. Noone is talking about Israel 'pleading victimhood', whatever that means. What we are talking about is how others perceive Israel and the imbalance in attention on this situation compared to others
4. Israel is not coralling people into concentration camps

@SharonEllis Personally, I think Israel has been singled out by some because it’s a western democracy that isn't necessarily acting like one. It’s the standard we’ve placed on ourselves that seems unfair when one of us is the centre of attention/expected to always live up to those standards. WDs are meant to be the gold standard of governing that we export to the world and yet, in reality, a WD commits war crimes and seemingly supports ethnic cleansing. It’s a clash of identity and it doesn’t fit with a lot of people’s idea of what makes us ‘better’ than other countries around the world. We’re taught (as members of a western democracy) that we’re morally superior than many other countries/ways of ruling: we have shared values, we all respect human rights and act with humanity. Yet here we. It shocks people and it becomes a talking point because on an identity level, we don’t like being in the same ‘club’ as those we thought were the ‘other’. Yemen and Sudan are easier to ‘understand’ because they don’t involve western democracies. We have (rightly or wrongly) made assumptions about places like Saudi or Sudan that (unfairly) make lots of people less outraged or interested by suffering there. It’s not right or fair but it, I believe, how the world works. We care more when one of ‘us’ is involved and we are more outraged when one of ‘us’ is not living up to our self imposed standards.

There are also plenty of people who have cared about the fate of Palestinian people long before the escalation of the conflict on 7/10. Israel have attracted attention for a long time with this group because this has all been happening for a long time. As with actions during this war, it is not the Jewish identity that makes them of interest to people, it is the actions of Israel towards Palestinians in Gaza and the WB. State encouraged stealing of land, the impact of blockades, Palestinian children being tried in military court - religion doesn’t matter to many people. It’s the actions that people don’t support. This behaviour has continued during the conflict and that combined with rhetoric is very concerning to the people who already knew plenty about the situation. It’s always been an issue but has had sporadic MM attention until this conflict - where were the issues with media bias when no one spoke about what was happening?

Then there are the people you are referring to - some will use Israel’s existence or its actions to help spread anti-semitism. The same is true for the other side and Islamophobia (conflating the entire Palestinian population or Muslim population with terrorists, hence why crimes against Muslim people have also massively increased during this conflict). I have no tolerance for either group and will call them out whenever I come across them. Hatred breeds hatred and it’s how we end up with violence, suffering and destruction.

So, whilst I think it is fair to say that some people pile on Israel because of antisemitism, I think it is massively simplistic to say that’s the only reason. I also think it is hugely dehumanising to the Palestinians people to say that people only care about their pain and suffering because of who is doing it. It is much more complicated than just one issue.

Israel is a funny one because it embeds Western values within a Middle Eastern context. It's progressive enough to have psytrance festivals, but crazy enough to have someone like Ben-Gvir wielding power based on Biblical concepts.

That's interesting.

Thinking of Israel as a western democracy seems wrong to me.

Its a democracy in the middle east. Its a middle eastern democracy.

Perhaps at 10.30 on the streets in Tel Aviv you could be forgiven for assuming you were on a European/ American street. You absolutely wouldn't make that mistake in Jerusalem, Jaffa, anywhere in Gaza or the WB.

Im prepared to extend a little bit of grace to those who just don't realise this I guess.

Personally, I think Israel has been singled out by some because it’s a western democracy that isn't necessarily acting like one.

But Israel isn’t a western democracy.

Israel is democratic, liberal, “western” and aligned to the west, but it is in the Middle East.

You say Israel “isn’t necessarily acting like” a western democracy, but if Israel were surrounded by other western democracies, then it would be able to.

It is currently not able to, because no western country faces the same situation on its borders. No western country has rockets and missilies fired into it on an almost constant basis.

Come back and tell me what a western democracy acts like when western democracies face the same situations as Israel does.

Come back and tell me what a western democracy acts like when western democracies face the same situations as Israel does.

I think this is the nub of it, for me! 🤯

Exactly. Who said Israel was a Western democracy? Its bizarre. Its in the Middle East and populated by Middle Eastern people! It is the only democracy in the Middle East that does not make it a Western democracy.

I also never understand the circular argument that other countries are allowed to do terrible things because we don't expect any better of them. Its profoundly racist and profoundly dehumanising. Though it does let a lot of people off the hook.

Exactly! All countries facing terrorist threats curtail what we would consider Western democratic standards. Israel has been living like this for most if not all of its history.

Israel is only Middle East geographically. In every other way it is a Western democracy.

How so?

Perhaps go there, live there for a while and see it with your own eyes.
They have all the hallmarks of a democratic country.
(wtf…your question!! 🙄)

Dont be ridiculous.
Its not in the West.
Its in the Middle East.

So its a Middle Eastern democracy.

Fgs.