> they are ostracized and delegitimized by the majority of Jewish MKs
Not exactly.
A conservative Arab party was part of the ruling government coalition in 2021. They joined with a wide spectrum of political parties seeking to defeat the Likud Prime Minister Netanyahu.
> Israel isn't a dictatorship and these things can change over time
Indeed, Israel is a democracy, and things have in fact changed over time. These changes in Israeli public opinion have been based largely on the actions of the Palestinians.
There was optimism about peace in 2007, after the withdrawal from Gaza: 70% of Israelis supported the two-state solution. After the Hamas massacres in 2023, there was 70% opposition to the two-state solution.
> every movement towards peace that Hamas has made since 2005 has been ignored
What movement towards peace?
June 10, 2003 — Hamas co-founder Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi says in an interview with al-Jazeera: “By God, we will not leave one Jew in Palestine. We will fight them with all the strength we have. This is our land, not the Jews’.”
June 25, 2006 — Hamas militants enter Israel via a tunnel, disable a patrolling Israeli tank, kill two of its four-man crew, seize another crew member, Gilad Shalit, and drag him back to Gaza.
June 7, 2007 — Hamas wins a brief but bloody civil war against Palestinian Authority rule in the Gaza Strip and ousts all Fatah officials.
January 4, 2010 — For Hamas, power is more important than leadership, according to al–Ahram: “Here, we have to direct the following question to Hamas and its leaders: Is power more important to you than the suffering of the Palestinians which you claim to be concerned about? If the Palestinian people are suffering terribly, then relinquishing power, in fact merely returning the PA to the [Gaza] crossing points, is a small price to pay. If not, then this means that the [Hamas 2007] coup and capturing power is more important to you than that suffering.”
April 8, 2011 — “The Jews are the most despicable and contemptible nation to crawl upon the face of the Earth because they have displayed hostility to Allah,” former Hamas Culture Minister Atallah Abu Al-Subh says on Al-Aqsa Television.
December 8, 2012 — Less than three weeks after Pillar of Defense, the head of Hamas, Khaled Mashaal, marks the anniversary of Hamas’ founding by reiterating that the organization will never accept Israel and by calling for its elimination. Israel’s demise remains a core element of Hamas ideology and fervor.
May 5, 2014 — Mousa Abu Marzouk, the deputy chairman of Hamas’ politburo, says in Al-Monitor: “Hamas will never recognize Israel. This is a red line that cannot be crossed. We would have spared ourselves seven years of misery under the siege and two wars in 2008 and 2012 had we wanted to recognize Israel. … The al-Qassam Brigades’ weaponry is of national importance to confront the occupation. Hamas’ position in this regard is clear, and it will not allow any tampering with the brigades’ armament, under any circumstances, because it is a strategic asset for all Palestinians.
July 25, 2014 — Former head of Saudi intelligence Turki al-Faisal holds Hamas responsible for the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip because of its arrogance. He writes in the Saudi daily Asharq al-Awsat: “The knowledge that the people of Gaza would be subjected to a savage bloodshed and suffering should have put limits to Hamas’ arrogance, but it did not. Moreover, Hamas’ readiness to cause a huge amount of suffering before the inevitable return to a truce or a cease-fire clearly exposes the abyss of unconcern into which it has fallen.”
July 14, 2019 — “There are Jews everywhere. We must attack every Jew on planet Earth! We must slaughter and kill them, with Allah’s help,” Hamas politburo member Fathi Hammad says at a rally on the Israel-Gaza border, as quoted by the Gatestone Institute.
May 26, 2021 — “I’d like to use this opportunity to warn the Zionist occupation and its leaders. We support the eradication of Israel through armed jihad and struggle,” Yahya Sinwar says
It truly baffles me how you think it's a good idea to post a long one-sided list of grievances in response to a "there are legitimate grievances on all sides, but we must move past it" type post. Do you really think I will do anything other than laugh at the absurdity and ridiculous of such an action? You have wasted your time.
Please make your substantive points without personal attack and aggression. You've been doing this repeatedly lately, and it's not ok, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are.
Do you think a Gish Gallop of tons of quotes is a good way of engaging? Their follow-up post is fine so no hard feelings. But critiquing someone dragging down the quality of the conversation after an attempt to raise the level is not a personal attack.
My post was not in response to "there are legitimate grievances on all sides," which I agree with.
But I cannot accept an off-hand suggestion that Hamas is in any way inclined towards peace with Israel. That is completely untrue, and I consider it dangerous to let that pass unanswered.
Falsely thinking that Hamas does want peace is an attitude that will not lead to peace, it will lead to more wars in the years to come.
That's something that the UK, Canada, and France all recognize, by the way. None of them want to see any role for Hamas in the future either.
You are, perhaps, not alone in thinking that Hamas has or has EVER had "peaceful" intentions, so I felt it called for a detailed justification why that was an incorrect position.
What's laughable, is to complain about "one-sided list of grievances" in a post on this issue. Have you seen any of the discussions on HN on this topic in the past two years?
Whether you believe them is another issue of course. But you need to at least try and no one ever did. After many years of refusing to talk to the IRA in the end the British government did, and that was key to the lasting peace. This was hugely controversial at the time and Major government lead talks in secret which were leaked. Lots of drama. But in the end it worked. In 1988 people could have said about the IRA what you're saying about Hamas (and they did). The Good Friday accord didn't even demand immediate disarmament by the way, but rather over time. There were plenty of violent hick-ups too (e.g. Real IRA).
And sure, long-term there is no future for Hamas – certainly not the paramilitary wing – just as there wasn't for the IRA. But Sinn Féin (IRA's political wing) still exists and that's okay. It's impossible to exclude Hamas from any and all negotiations in the short term because they're doing the fighting.
A pure military solution will never be the answer (well, except via genocide, which is hardly an "answer"). Even if one could kill every single Hamas member, you will just end up with a new Hamas-ng and we're back where we started. This is why you need to address some of the underlying injustices, which is that the British government did.
And that was my entire point. Everything may seem impossible and hopeless today. But so did things in 1988 NI. There are real challenges for sure, but the outlines of a solution are actually not all that complicated.
It's annoying that the title and summary alone tell me nothing, without additional information about 1) how sensitive are these tests, and 2) what concentration is medically significant.
The missing sentence could be, "That's because modern detection methods are now so amazingly accurate that they can detect insignificant quantities of chemicals."
Or it could be, "Therefore, if you drink beer you will be poisoned and die a horrible death."
Or maybe it's just, "Start worrying, and we'll figure out if it means anything later."
I posted this article about political violence from Politico 3 months ago. It got 3 votes and sank. But it resurfaced on their website today because of this event (they revised the title of the front page link to make the subject more clear) so I'll bring it up again:
The author's point is that political violence does occur in cycles, and one thing that makes a cycle run down is when it gets gets so awful that universal revulsion overtakes the political advantages of increasing radicaloric and action.
He gives examples, which may be within the living memory of older HN readers (like me):
"I can remember back in the ’60s, early ’70s, it felt like the political violence was never going to end. I mean, if you were an Italian in the ’60s or the ’70s, major political and judicial figures, including prime ministers, were getting bumped off on a regular basis. And it seemed like it was never going to end, but it did. It seemed like the anarchist violence of the early 20th century — it lasted for a couple of decades, killed the U.S. president — it seemed that was never going to end either, but it does. These things burn themselves out."
and:
"You had the assassination of the U.S. president, of Martin Luther King, of Bobby Kennedy. And then it stopped. People shied away from political violence. Exactly why it stopped, I don’t know, but it did. It wasn’t just assassinations, it was also street violence. And then things calmed down."
This is not particularly optimistic, but it it's an interesting analysis.
I took an intensive first-year Latin class last summer (The Latin Workshop at Berkeley).
Very early on, we were given a sample of a translation into Latin by Google, with the assignment to list dumb grammatical mistakes that Google had made.
I think this was to cause anyone who had the idea of using Google to help with homework to abandon THAT idea pretty quickly!
It's not a good idea to use Google to translate into Latin.
I don't know what you're reading, but on HN, almost nothing Israel says is taken at face value, everything Israel says is scrutinized and cast doubt upon. I don't see a lot of questioning of statements derived from Palestinians, Hamas, or Al Jazeera.
People flag articles because they disagree with them, but also because they just think the discussion may descend into uninformative yelling. My point concerned the discussions that do appear, rather than which articles make it through unflagged, but even there it appears they don't support the narrative of "only good things about Israel appear in the media."
There's a relevant discussion in this recent post from a couple weeks ago:
"We want to give the topic of Israel and Gaza fair exposure, as it's obviously an important story and it would feel wrong to pretend it's not happening.
At the same time, every time we have one of these stories on the front page, it turns in to a hellish flamewar, we have to spend all day moderating it..."
>I don't understand where they think this is going ...
This statement could be taken two ways: 1) it's purely rhetorical, i.e., there is no possible explanation for what Israel is doing and there literally is no possible way to do any analysis of it, or 2) it's a statement of lack of knowledge, i.e., I don't understand this; maybe someone else can explain it to me.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume #2.
The way to understand the Israeli point of view is to read the Israeli press and listen to Israeli political analysts, of which there are many. That shouldn't be a controversial statement.
I found this recent podcast particularly informative. You don't have to listen to it; if you open it in an appropriate podcast app you can get the transcript:
Not exactly.
A conservative Arab party was part of the ruling government coalition in 2021. They joined with a wide spectrum of political parties seeking to defeat the Likud Prime Minister Netanyahu.
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