I don't have an issue if someone wants to compare Hamas to Nazis. I would not equate all Germans with Nazis or all Palestinians with Hamas. We tend to view the ruling ideology as representing everyone in a nation, and that isn't true.
I disagree with your take here. Comparing Hamas to Nazis has implications I don't think you are considering. Remember the reason why the US and GB went to war with Nazis. It wasn't because of their genocide of Jews and other minority groups. It was because Nazis were an exesential threat to American and British global hegomony with the Nazi regime successfully invading almost all of Europe. Comparing that to a entity that exists only because a group of people haven't had civil rights or self determination for over half a century and the cascading effects leading to that entity gives more manufactured consent that Hamas "must be destroyed at all costs" to the point of leveling entire civilian population centers. You see this manufactured consent process when people defend the leveling of Gaza to Dresden. Comparing Hamas to Nazis is one of the tools to generate manufactured consent for ethnic cleansing/genocide. "Are Americans and the British evil for leveling Dresden to defeat the Nazis?"
Wants it to be occupied by Americans? I don't think we would occupy it for very long, and they know that.... it would de facto become part of Israel in short time. Also, Saudi Arabia and possibly Jordan would be happy with it, because it would deal a blow to Iran and the spread of Iranian influence. As for Iraq - it is in a precarious situation, where it is being used as a bridge for Iranian and other extremists to get into Palestinian controlled areas. As for it causing uprising, it certainly would, especially in Egypt and possibly Jordan... Iran would also have serious issues. I am not in favor of the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, and I do not believe that the USA should be involved in controlling the Gaza Strip. However, the reality is that while it is unpredictable, it could end up benefitting a regime in the region depending on the outcome.
You are getting into the power and influence of regimes - there is no question that Nazi's had more power, more reach and caused more death than Hamas. However - a lot of that comes down to opportunity. We can discuss why organizations exist - be that Hamas, Nazi or IRA - they all relied on violence, and at different points they all plans to go beyond their base reasons for existing.... as they all believed they were wronged or squeezed. I don't really think it is beneficial to discuss this in greater detail, as I think it detracts from the larger issue - but I will if you want. I don't really have much of a desire to decide just how evil Hamas is compared to The National Socialist Party or even Mao's Party of others.
Using the term "ethnic cleansing" is just an attempt to use charged language to inflame the situation. Ethnic groups have been moved plenty throughout human history to little fanfare. It's happening in various parts of the world right now. Nobody cares but when it's Gaza everyone gets their bee in a bonnet. Selective and performative outrage.
Honestly understanding Hamas is part of the problems solving process of preventing another Hamas. When we compare Hamas to Nazis we become more stupid in understanding historical context that allows us to not repeat prior mistakes. When it comes to "evil"... Do you know a former terror organization called Nakam? They compromised former Jewish Holocaust survivors who organized and nearly executed a plan to poisoon the water supply of major German cities and effectively kill millions of German civilians. They failed at their plot. Eventually this terror group escaped to Israel and received a warm welcome and settled there. Is the action that Nakam attempted to do evil? Yes. Who do I attribute that evil to? The Nazi soldiers that tortured the people who joined Nakam and gave them a level of PTSD none of us here can fathom that led to their genocidal thoughts. That's who I blame for the evil attempt these Holocaust survivors failed to execute.
I mean yes human existence is full of ethnic cleansings. The point of international law was to prevent this common occurrence.
U.S. has had its hands in plenty of "ethnic cleansings." From redrawing the maps of Europe after WW1 and again after WW2 to plenty of other examples. Spare us the sanctimony. Sometimes these things need to be done.
The Allies and their "international law" were complicit in widespread ethnic cleansing after both the first and second world wars. Nobody cares. Nobody remarks on it. People settle, things move on.
I know. 30 years from now there will be some memorial built for Gazans and some apology letter from the state of Israel. I agree in terms of how humanity deals with ethnic cleansings.
It is textbook ethnic cleansing. What inflames the situation is that Trump proposed it as a serious solution. I will say ethnic cleansing all day because people need to understand the stakes we're talking about. If Palestinians are relocated to some other country, it will eventually mean the destruction of their culture, their way of life, and the Palestinians themselves as a people. Of course it has happened plenty of times before in history. Especially in the period of imperialism and its culmination in WWII. It was so bad, we created the United Nations and a whole body of international law to try to end the practice. The United States too has done plenty of this too. Better than that, we engaged in actual bloody genocide. None of that makes it right nor does it make my objection to this proposal somehow hypocritical -- since I do object to every other instance of genocide and ethnic cleansing in history too. What I see more of here is the manifestation of what I suggested a few pages back -- that while we used to have some consensus in the mid-to-late-20th-century that ethnic cleansing is wrong, that fidelity is waning and modern day fascists are doubting whether it really was all that immoral to begin with. But, it is.
WASHINGTON, Feb 10 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said Palestinians would not have the right of return to the Gaza Strip under his proposal to redevelop the enclave, contradicting his own officials who had suggested Gazans would only be relocated temporarily. In an excerpt of a Fox News interview released on Monday, Trump added that he thought he could make a deal with Jordan and Egypt to take the displaced Palestinians, saying the U.S. gives the two countries "billions and billions of dollars a year." Asked if Palestinians would have the right to return to Gaza, Trump told Fox News: "No, they wouldn't because they're going to have much better housing." Seems to me that is exactly what he is proposing.
This is great - but I don't hear very many people defending Hamas. There seems to be this purposeful confusion over the difference between Hamas terrorists and the Palestinians. Why the confusion? It is then a lot easier to justify ethnic cleansing. Did the Allies treat the German people the same as the SS and card carrying Nazi party members? No - because there is a difference.
You don't grasp the importance of gaza to the muslim population. The idea that Saudis or Jordanians care more about Iranian influence rather than the turmoil an American occupation would cause is ridiculous. The Quran states numerous times how important the land is and tells muslims that the Palestinians will be occupying the land on the day of judgment. I don't think non muslims have any idea the amount of riots and instability an American occupation would cause. Saudis and Jordanians care more about staying in power than they do about Iranian influence. American occupation would cause the biggest uprising in the region in half a century. No emir or dictator wants to deal with that ****. Muslims in the region would raise up like never before
I did not grow up in the Middle East. I am married to an Assyrian woman that to this day speaks Aramaic and Arabic fluently, I am regularly around Arabs and have family that are Arabs - I have also been to the Middle East a number of times. I am not a Muslim living in Egypt --- but I am aware that Gaza, and Palestinians in general (primarily peasants) are very much tied to the plight of Palestine. Having said that, I also know that a lot of the leaders in the Middle East have different concerns depending on the particular country. Yes - I believe that Saudi Arabia is more concerned about Iran than Israel getting control of the Gaza Strip. Saudi Arabia has good control of their population and people....... now Egypt is a different situation....... Jordan, their primary concern is more likely to be where the Palestinians end up in relation to Jordan..... Kuwait as well. Again - I do not discount the real possibility of open rebellions in the Middle East. I think the USA having any involvement in the forced displacement of any population of people is unethical and in the case of Palestinians - an enormous risk. Having said that -- there are powers and entities other than Israel that would profit from it. This is something that the Assyrians have even discussed before, and the complicated relationships between Iran and Iraq and Israel, and everyone else.
Do people join Hamas like people join Nazis through ideological belief in superiority over other groups? I'm not defending the way Hamas operates to provide Palestinians self determination. But I'll defend the right of Palestinians to be radicalized through being oppressed rather than the claim that there is an intrinsic trait of barbarism within Palestinians. That's the problem here. Hamas is not the solution to the problem but at the same time they aren't like ISIS where membership is motivated through men having identity crisis that leads them to believe they deserve sex slaves. I'm trying to hammer home the point that Hamas is a end product of oppression. Germans weren't oppressed when they decided to put Nazis in power. The Nazi movement thrived because the small business class felt threatened that communists are coming for their property. That is so different than how Hamas came to power.
Hamas comes and goes, but the hate remains. There isn't a singular point of reference the Israelis did for Hamas to justify Oct 7 attacks to world opinion. Germany would be much different if the Germans didn't surrender unconditionally and resisted tooth and nail with pipe and bus bombings all the way to peristroika. There was already the Negro Problem. The Soviets dealt with this by shipping out dissidents to Siberia while transporting in millions of colonists. Kaliningrad (Konigsberg) and Crimea comes to mind. We'd probably shift them elsewhere because Berlin was a powder keg as it was, but it didn't hurt our effort to see how the Russians treated the Germans on their side of the wall. So if West Germans then decided to take in the Nazi name and Germans still inherently believed in the calls of being a Superior Race by tithing their QoL to support a Nazi underground, I'm not sure American Generals would treat them lightly. Especially after the tenth x time in 80 years where peace is disregarded as a pause of hostilities to rebuild and retrench again.
Can you point to some specific examples, which the US was materially involved in, since the Fourth Geneva Conventions in 1949 (which we signed and ratified, and therefore are legally bound to adhere to)? Here is the text stated there: Article 49 – Deportations, Transfers, Evacuations "Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive." "Nevertheless, the Occupying Power may undertake total or partial evacuation of a given area if the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand. Such evacuations may not involve the displacement of protected persons outside the bounds of the occupied territory except when, for material reasons, it is impossible to avoid such displacement. Persons thus evacuated shall be transferred back to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased." "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."
