naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
This narrative is awfully convenient from a pro-Israeli perspective, but if this was all motivated with holy war and religious bigotry, how come the Palestinian liberation movement was broadly secular before the 1980s? The leader of PFLP was after all a christian born Palestinian communist. And how come Israel had to help Hamas along in its infancy, to counter PLO? If this was all motivated by religious hatred, surely the islamist organizations would be at the forefront since the very beginning?
...how come the Palestinian liberation movement...
What does that matter to the Egyptians, Iranians, etc. who just need a convenient tool? What the Palestinians themselves think of all this is only marginally relevant, so long as they remain a functional tool. Israel's role in shaping that tool is also irrelevant; iron sharpens iron, and Hamas has shaped Israel as surely as Israel has shaped Hamas. But it is not Israel who ships arms into Palestine, not Israel who trains Hamas terrorists.
I am not "pro-Israeli" in any sense; as an American I am in fact deeply skeptical of Israel as a frankly unreliable ally. But this does not change the truth of the matter, which is that if Palestinians were not a convenient tool of anti-Israel Islamists (and, I suppose, the occasional secular anti-Semite) then the Palestinians would have no allies at all.
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Notes -
This narrative is awfully convenient from a pro-Israeli perspective, but if this was all motivated with holy war and religious bigotry, how come the Palestinian liberation movement was broadly secular before the 1980s? The leader of PFLP was after all a christian born Palestinian communist. And how come Israel had to help Hamas along in its infancy, to counter PLO? If this was all motivated by religious hatred, surely the islamist organizations would be at the forefront since the very beginning?
http://web.archive.org/web/20090926212507/http:/online.wsj.com/article/SB123275572295011847.html
What does that matter to the Egyptians, Iranians, etc. who just need a convenient tool? What the Palestinians themselves think of all this is only marginally relevant, so long as they remain a functional tool. Israel's role in shaping that tool is also irrelevant; iron sharpens iron, and Hamas has shaped Israel as surely as Israel has shaped Hamas. But it is not Israel who ships arms into Palestine, not Israel who trains Hamas terrorists.
I am not "pro-Israeli" in any sense; as an American I am in fact deeply skeptical of Israel as a frankly unreliable ally. But this does not change the truth of the matter, which is that if Palestinians were not a convenient tool of anti-Israel Islamists (and, I suppose, the occasional secular anti-Semite) then the Palestinians would have no allies at all.
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Its convenience has no bearing on its truth.
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