Things Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine - Page 549

On October 10 2026 00:06 Nebuchad wrote:


Obviously yeah.

On October 14 2026 03:09 oBlade wrote:

Let's roll this "you started it" back in steps chronologically and see whose fault lies at the root.

Currently Hamas is stuck in the remaining less than half of Gaza that Israel doesn't control and agreed to a ceasefire.

Hamas's predicament is the consequence of Israel entering Gaza (where it wasn't before) to get rid of them

That operation was in response to 6,000 Hamas/Palestinians invading Israel and killing 1,000 people in a day and taking hundreds of hostages. (1)

You say that was in response to "Israel killing a bunch of Palestinians." Israel killed about 5,000-7,000 people in Gaza from the time Hamas took power to October 6th, 2023. (2)

Those weren't just recreational hunts against civilians with the wrong skin, it was combatting decades of Palestinian terror and rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel.

Those decades of terror and rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel (including October 7th) are in response to Israel's existence.

Hamas took power in Gaza in response to Israel leaving Gaza (after Israel offered negotiations and two-state solutions multiple times that Palestinians refused or snubbed altogether, finally saying fine figure it out yourself).

Israel left Gaza in response to over a thousand dead Israelis since the PA took over in 1994.

The PA took over in 1994 in response to Israel allowing it, in order to move towards peace and eventually leave Gaza which it had taken from Egypt decades earlier.

Israel took Gaza from Egypt decades earlier in response to the Arab countries in the region ganging up on it (they did not want to annex Gaza the whole time and therefore invaded Egypt - also Egypt doesn't want it back).

Arab countries in the region ganged up on it in response to its existence (the pattern becomes apparent eventually). I like Israel's idea of solving the security problem which keeps escalating things, rather than something like an eye-for-an-eye eternal blood feud where Israel should have gone to a Gazan music festival and shot 1000 dancers instead of their idea to just remove Hamas. Your idea is to start at (1) and blame everything on (2)? Seems neither fair nor realistic.

On October 14 2026 03:26 Nebuchad wrote:


Stop thinking about morals and think about mechanics. You understand that the 100000+ people that Israel killed since october 7th was a response to what Hamas did. Based on that, you have all the available tools within your brain to understand that what Hamas does is also a response to what Israel did in the past.

On October 14 2026 03:26 Nebuchad wrote:
If you're really into making this a moral question for some weird rightwing reason, then you can just say that both groups are killing people and it's not self-defense, so they're both morally in the wrong. That's how a normal person would look at it morally, you don't have to look at who started it, that's not really how this works, it's very easy to imagine a scenario in which group A started it long in the past but group B is to blame for what happens today; but also, for the record and even though it doesn't really matter, Israel did also start it, by being a colonial project.

On October 14 2026 04:04 oBlade wrote:
What Israel did in the past is a response to what Hamas did in the past also.

On October 14 2026 04:15 KwarK wrote:
There Israel was, innocently existing, and for some reason that upset Palestinians.

On October 14 2026 05:25 Nebuchad wrote:


Are you operating under some special english in which if the thing that you're responding to was also done in response to something else, then what you do is no longer called a response?

On October 14 2026 05:34 oBlade wrote:
No. If the word "response" were justifying or exonerating per se, it should have meant Israel is fine because they're responding. Do you have a point?

On October 14 2026 05:47 Nebuchad wrote:


My point was that the answer to the question that some idiot asked one page ago, "Are you really saying the slaughter of a thousand civilians on October 7th was "some sort of violent response" to Israel killing a bunch of Palestinians?", is "Obviously yeah".

On October 14 2026 06:03 oBlade wrote:

We already knew you thought that when you answered it one page ago. You don't realize it's reductive. Bizarro-Nebuchad can just say:

The next time Hamas does an October 7th massacre and there's some kind of violent response, and they use that response to say "Oh no our hand is forced my god we were ATTACKED we have to go and kill more Jews now", if we're in a world where their narrative isn't centered, it's not going to play.

Response is load-bearing but simultaneously doesn't mean much. That's why I tried to unearth more about the origin and dynamics of these violent (and other) responses.

On October 14 2026 05:34 oBlade wrote:

Palestinians are allowed to be upset. Even for having been displaced in the 1948 war. Upset is natural. That's not a blank check.

On October 14 2026 12:54 PremoBeats wrote:
If you are saying October 7th was a mere violent response to Israeli actions, you are making a claim about the relationship between events. That claim can be historically accurate without implying justification, inevitability, or an absence of agency.

"Hamas carried out October 7th as a response to Israeli oppression of Palestinians." is different from "Hamas carried out October 7th in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but understanding the attack also requires examining Hamas' Islamist ideology, its conception of the conflict, its strategic objectives, its attitudes toward Jews and Israel, and its leadership's decisions."

The first explanation risks portraying Hamas as an actor whose conduct is principally determined by what Israel does.
Thus one can overlook:
- What kind of political order does Hamas want?
- What role does its religious ideology play in defining the conflict?
- Does Hamas regard the conflict as a territorial and national struggle, a religious struggle, or some combination of both?
- How does its ideological worldview shape the actions it considers legitimate?
- Why did its leadership choose a mass-casualty attack on civilians rather than alternative strategies?

It would be reductive to explain everything through Israeli policy. It would also be reductive to explain everything through Islamism. So I say it again: the idea of establishing Israel was sure to open a shit ton of problems with all the suffering it inflicted.
But to see if Israeli policy is the sole factor in driving Hamas' actions we could ask ourselves whether changes in Israeli policy would necessarily eliminate Hamas' ideological objectives or its willingness to use violence. As I made clear several times, I think that is highly unlikely unless there is no Israeli state left issuing policies... based on Hamas' own charter.
Because we also have a comparative case looking at a political actor who also is subject to Israeli actions in the West Bank (as well as much more settlement expansion) who isn't using that kind of violence.
Again: it's complex, not uni-factorial.

On October 14 2026 12:54 PremoBeats wrote:
If you are saying October 7th was a mere violent response to Israeli actions, you are making a claim about the relationship between events. That claim can be historically accurate without implying justification, inevitability, or an absence of agency.
But it becomes reductive if "response" is used as a substitute for explaining Hamas's motivations, strategic objectives, ideology, decision-making, and responsibility for choosing to attack civilians.

I think religious fundamentalism is a pretty good way to demonstrate how describing October 7th simply as a response can be reductive, if the framing pushes one causal explanation while ignoring / obfuscating factors that are independently necessary. Thus one can reduce an ideological project to a reaction.

"Hamas carried out October 7th as a response to Israeli oppression of Palestinians." is different from "Hamas carried out October 7th in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but understanding the attack also requires examining Hamas' Islamist ideology, its conception of the conflict, its strategic objectives, its attitudes toward Jews and Israel, and its leadership's decisions."

The first explanation risks portraying Hamas as an actor whose conduct is principally determined by what Israel does.
Thus one can overlook:
- What kind of political order does Hamas want?
- What role does its religious ideology play in defining the conflict?
- Does Hamas regard the conflict as a territorial and national struggle, a religious struggle, or some combination of both?
- How does its ideological worldview shape the actions it considers legitimate?
- Why did its leadership choose a mass-casualty attack on civilians rather than alternative strategies?

It would be reductive to explain everything through Israeli policy. It would also be reductive to explain everything through Islamism. So I say it again: the idea of establishing Israel was sure to open a shit ton of problems with all the suffering it inflicted.
But to see if Israeli policy is the sole factor in driving Hamas' actions we could ask ourselves whether changes in Israeli policy would necessarily eliminate Hamas' ideological objectives or its willingness to use violence. As I made clear several times, I think that is highly unlikely unless there is no Israeli state left issuing policies... based on Hamas' own charter.
Because we also have a comparative case looking at a political actor who also is subject to Israeli actions in the West Bank (as well as much more settlement expansion) who isn't using that kind of violence.
Again: it's complex, not uni-factorial.

On October 14 2026 18:11 PremoBeats wrote:
Islamist ideology? Well... as with most conservative leaning societies where religion plays a prominent role, people tend to adopt the beliefs and worldviews prevalent in their social environment. You are statistically simply more likely to be a Buddhist in Bhutan, a Christian in America and a Muslim in Palestine. The prevalence of Islamist ideology, and the extremity of some of its manifestations in Palestine, are separate, multi-factorial questions.

If you mean the killings on October 7th / cheering the death of innocent civilians... it is a lot more complicated, as I pointed out in the reply before. Of course, the establishment of Israel, the Nakba and the following decades of conflict and injustices are fundamental to understanding the historical context. But the first event in a historical sequence is not necessarily the sufficient, decisive, or even most important cause of a later outcome.

It would be foolish imo to assume that these historical circumstances are the sole explanation, just as it would be foolish to ignore the role of religious fundamentalism in shaping Hamas's ideological objectives and conception of legitimate violence.
Religious affiliation, support for an Islamist political project, and approval of mass violence are three distinct variables. Treating them as equivalent would be just as reductive as explaining all of Hamas's conduct through Israeli policy.

On October 14 2026 18:19 Nebuchad wrote:


I didn't mean either of these two things, I meant the thing that you talked about in the last post. What I try to do when I respond to posts is talk about the thing that is in the post, not something else. This is typically how humans have conversations with each other.

See, in the last post you made the point that Hamas is bad, it has a bad ideology, which you think is a very complex multi-factorial issue (it's not). So, in your view, why do so many people adhere to this bad ideology in Palestine?

On October 14 2026 21:05 PremoBeats wrote:


I was literally talking about Islamism as a perfect example of this whole stuff being multifactorial.
In your own post before that you were having a discussion about the October 7th massacre.

But alright... Hamas. Do you think it is bad? Or its ideology? Or attacks on civilians which Hamas proudly committed?

And can you point to the direct sentence or notion that needs clarification?
Because I think you're attributing a position to me that I didn't actually express in the passage you're referring to. I discussed the role of religious fundamentalism in shaping Hamas ideological objectives and its conception of legitimate violence in the context of reductionist notions. That's not the same thing as making the explicit argument that you attribute to me (with which I don't necessarily disagree, but it seems like you are changing the subject away from reductionism).

On October 14 2026 15:59 dyhb wrote:
It's a bit like asking people so obsessed about Germany's grievances from the 1920s and 1930s to do less in excusing Hitler's actions as an inevitable response to provocation and a bit more placing Hitler's actions as fully evil and horrific even considering surrounding circumstances. Can you really call the Holocaust horrific, when saying such a thing ignores and excuses the bombing of Dresden???

All of this. The naive wing of anti-Israel reactionary political thought downplays Hamas and centers Israel as an agent and actor while pushing Hamas and the "arab street" to a passive position. It won't work. The erasure of Israel as an actual nation is too important to Israel's enemies to relegate that to some understandable reaction to Israel's actions ie Israel's to blame for "from the river to the sea."

On October 14 2026 21:43 LightSpectra wrote:


How many Palestinians would support Hamas materially and morally if there wasn't ongoing settler violence against Palestinians?