#genocidal intentions repeatedly in history and throughout the past nearly 2 months!’

[mithliya]

Ghazi Hamad is the Hamas leader I was referring to. He did an live interview on a Lebanese news channel on October 24th. I don't speak Arabic, but Memri TV quotes him as saying

"Israel is a country that has no place on our land. We must remove that country, because it constitutes a security, military, and political catastrophe to the Arab and Islamic nation, and must be finished. We are not ashamed to say this, with full force."

And

"We must teach Israel a lesson, and we will do this again and again. The Al-Aqsa Flood is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth, because we have the determination, the resolve, and the capabilities to fight. Will we have to pay a price? Yes, and we are ready to pay it. We are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs."

I don't speak Arabic, so maybe Memri is lying to me. Maybe it's biased and I'm misinformed, maybe Hamad isn't representative, but I'm not lying. That's why I sent you that ask, to try to get your side. Because I genuinely don't know how Israel can have a ceasefire with Hamas if Hamas is committed to repeating October 7th (that is what the "Al-Aqsa Flood" is, right?) until Israel is destroyed.

That's not to say that I agree with the way Israel has gone about this war. I was referring specifically to a ceasefire. Do the sources from your article say that Hamas surrenders in that proposed agreement? Or do they go on to slaughter and kidnap more civilians? Could that not be why Israel agreed to humanitarian pauses instead of a ceasefire?

(Also, you accuse me of lying and then immediately misquote me as saying "all sides" instead of "multiple sides" but whatever.)

It is disgusting to me though that you refer to it as "empty threats". When Hamas indiscriminately slaughters civilians at a music festival, is that empty to you? Does a pile of women with their hands tied behind their backs, no pants, and a bullethole in the head matter to you? When they go kibbutz to kibbutz slaughtering civilians, is that not a genocide to you? Or does it not count because they're Jewish?

5 hours where hamas doesnt bomb people hardly constitute “humanitarian pauses”, frankly. but i’ll take ur word for hamas saying that, memri tv’s translations have generally been accurate so i assume it would be accurate there. that said, long before october 27, several israeli officials and soldiers have blatantly and explicitly said that they plan to entirely erase gaza and take over gaza. not to mention israel’s history of uplifting hamas with the goal of dividing and conquering & making it hard for palestine to form a state.

the source said that hamas offered to return dozens of hostages for several days of ceasefire. you could click the link, you know. it says israel rejected it because they dont want a ceasefire for several days. can you explain how its meant to somehow help the hostages to constantly bomb the same little strip the hostages are in indiscriminately? clearly israel doesn’t even care for the hostages because they’ve taken actions that wouldnt somehow spare them.

i dont care what you find disgusting. hamas has existed for decades and only on one event have they actually managed to make significant damage, and even then it did not manage to do more damage than israel has been doing for decades. them saying “we’ll do it again and again” and israel actively, actually, doing the war crimes theyre saying theyll commit (whereas hamas did not in fact manage to do october 7 again and again) is an empty threat, at least comparatively. you trying to turn this around on me while justifying the mass-killing of palestinian children, palestinian civilians, even palestinians in the west bank with nothing to do with hamas is a joke.

if it’s a genocide for hamas to have committed attacks on one day, then how the fuck is it not genocide for israel’s govt to explicitly say they want to commit a genocide and to have a 75 year history of mass-killing and oppressing palestinians? i didnt once justify hamas’ attacks on october 7th, but you’ve happily justified every attack by israel prior to that and every attack by israel (ie the attack on october 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 etc all the way until november 22) since that day.