Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
There seem to be a lot of Palestinian nationalists who are being treated as Hamas apologists. One might think you'd sympathize with their efforts to stake out an increasingly irrelevant centrism.
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I do, and I don't think theirs is an irrelevant position. Desiring a free state for Palestinians is a valid position. Those people are not at all Hamas apologists, and should not be treated as such.
There is one noxious position that seems to characterize all Hamas apologists:
"The people had no other way to fight for themselves and get attention except for doing something drastic, as they did."
That position has no validity given what Hamas did. First, it conflates Palestinians and Hamas. Two different things. Palestinians do not want war. Many of them near the border worked in Israel. If anything, they want to be free of Hamas' subjugation, and to live in Israel, or a free state like Israel. Second, it is a frivolous attempt at expansion of the almost always frivolous argument that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Third, it plainly states that murder of innocents is an acceptable political act.
If one argues that Hamas was somehow pushed to do what it did here, that person is knowingly ignoring objective reality and completely avoiding the real and obvious reasons we all know Hamas did what it did. I do not understand why anyone would seek to so obscure issues except out of bias, ignorance, or ill intent.
