[runarberg]

I don’t know what I have said constitutes either a lie or hate. I’m not making generalizing statements about racial groups, nor painting a picture about victims of violence which seeks to minimize or justify said violence. What I am doing is interpreting said violence in a less hateful way as you have, and pointing out how you interpretation is harmful.

Now I live around Palestinians, I have spoken with Palestinian refugees, both in Iceland and the USA. I have attended lectures from Palestinians, I follow Palestinians on social media (both the diaspora, from Gaza, West-Bank, and East Jerusalem). And my interaction with them paints a very different picture than you. The Palestinians I have spoken to don care about Hamas, they may even support Hamas, their primary concern is the Israeli occupation, and sometimes the Israeli settler-colonial national psyche (i.e. Zionism). They are way more pissed at the Israeli government, the behavior it has normalized, the support it gets from Israeli citizens, and the complicity from both Western countries, but especially the inactivity of other Arab countries. They may bring up religious settlers, but that would just be one example of a much larger list of the systemic oppression they experience. They may bring up Hamas, but that is getting into the nitty grit of Palestine politics, they are actually more likely to criticize Palestinian Authority than Hamas.

Now my experience in interacting with Palestinians is probably very skewed to the left. I meet people in protests, on social media I follow gay’s rights activists, etc. So no doubt there are more conservative Palestinians who’s primary concern is Hamas and religious settlers, however I don’t think that makes my view ignorant nor hateful, just a little biased. However if I were to reduce the Palestinian opinion to only include the more simplistic and conservative one, that would not only make my option ignorant, but also perhaps a little racist.

[gryzzly]

thanks for the explaining where you come from.

it is indeed sad to hear that so few of the palestinians you have talked to are interested in peace and introspection. hamas is objectively the main reason for gazans’ misery and yet you didn’t meet the brave people who speak against them. anyway, it is also shunned in that community (especially expats who go to pro-palestinian demonstrations) to doubt the narrative of the pro-violence factions.

I can recommend you to seek such voices if you really want to know more and to actually contribute anything rational towards peaceful life in the region.

[runarberg]

> hamas is objectively the main reason for gazans’ misery and yet you didn’t meet the brave people who speak against them

This is the kind of speech I was talking about. You are shifting the blame of the Gaza genocide, and the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories away from the perpetrators of said genocide and occupation and onto the people who are fighting said occupation.

This is exactly the kind of speech which was very common in 19th and 20th century Europe and was used to justify their numerous genocide against indigenous peoples, who fell victims to European colonial conquest and oppression.

[gryzzly]

the blame of suffering in gaza is on Hamas, there isn’t any reason to not repeat this and you better try to understand it, if you dont want more violence in the region.

you can name many “indigenous people who fell victims” who butchered a thousand civilians and then took 250 hostage? what are you talking about with your inappropriate comparisons?

[runarberg]

> do you understand how grave is an accusation of genocide?

That is what you did 9 posts upthread. My claim of the Gaza genocide is well accepted among most genocide experts, several human rights organizations, international organizations, and several of the world’s government. The accusation of Oct 7 being a genocide is a fringe theory, which hardly anybody believes, but is used to justify the actual Gaza genocide. This is precisely why I jumped in this threat. To call out your speech for what it is.

> you can name many “indigenous people who fell victims” who butchered a thousand civilians and then took 250 hostage?

That specifically, no. Generally, yes. FLN in French Algeria comes quick to mind. They were probably as brutal and disregarding of civilian casualties among the French colonial settler population as Hamas is. ZANU and ZIPRA in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) is not hard to think of either. They regularly engaged in terrorist tactics. ZIPRA for example downed two civilian airplanes with the sole reason of killing as many white Rhodesian settlers as they could.

If we include general violence against the settler colonists done be the indigenous population outside of an organized group then the Haitian slave revolt is easy to mention. The revolting slaves made no distinction between civilians and military. There you actually had beheaded children which the freed slaves would put onto pikes and display to the french colonial soldiers.

If we include general colonies (not just settler colonies) the Viet Cong and the Kenyan Mau Mau come to mind. The Viet Cong would regularly bomb civilian targets and the Mau Mau did the infamous Lari Massacre where 74 (mostly) civilians were burned inside a locked hut.

All of these atrocities (except maybe the Hatian slave revolt) were than used to justify extreme violence against the indigenous population. The Mau Mau aftermath by british soldiers were particularly brutal, but still comes nowhere near the atrocities commit by the Israeli settler colonial army during the ongoing Gaza genocide.

Finally I would also like to call attention to the French Resistance. They didn’t come anywhere near Hamas in brutality against civilians. At worst they would throw grenades at Nazi soldiers in a public setting. But that didn’t stop the Nazi occupiers from calling them terrorist and use it to justify mass atrocities against the general French population.

[gryzzly]

do you understand how grave is an accusation of genocide? what gives you the right to say this as a matter of fact? this is the hate and the lie, and you have absolutely no right to judge based on attending some hateful demonstrations. that’s it.