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ANKARA, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, in his strongest comments yet on the Gaza conflict, said on Wednesday the Palestinian militant group Hamas was not a terrorist organisation but a liberation group fighting to protect Palestinian lands and people.
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And the Kurds are…?
Freedom fighters don’t take civilian hostages, gun down unarmed civilians & murder children.
Incoming whataboutism from a moron in 3…2…
Those children were oppressing them.
Prime example of “Consider the Source”.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/03/24/turkey-erdogans-onslaught-rights-and-democracy
So the PKK are?
I mean, even if for the sake of argument that is their purpose (admittedly, I don’t know enough about Hamas to know if freeing Palestinians is actually their goal or if they’re just using Palestinian anger to get recruits for some other goal), freedom fighters and terrorists are not mutually exclusive. Using the tactic of intentionally causing terror, especially among civilians, to try to force one’s political objectives is terrorism and makes the user a terrorist, regardless of what they might be fighting for.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Speaking to lawmakers from his ruling AK Party, Erdogan also called for an immediate ceasefire between Israeli and Palestinian forces and said Muslim countries must act together to secure a lasting peace in the region.
“Hamas is not a terrorist organisation, it is a liberation group, ‘mujahideen’ waging a battle to protect its lands and people,” he said, using an Arabic word denoting those who fight for their faith.
Many of Turkey’s NATO allies consider Hamas a terrorist group, and Erdogan’s comments drew a swift rebuke from Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who said they were “grave and disgusting and did not help with de-escalation”.
“I will propose to my colleague (Foreign Minister Antonio) Tajani to send a formal protest and to summon the Turkish Ambassador,” Salvini said in a note.
It has since strongly condemned Israel’s heavy bombardment of Gaza, which is controlled by the militant Islamist group, while offering to mediate in the conflict and sending several shipments of humanitarian aid.
Turkey, which hosts members of Hamas on its territory, backs a two-state solution to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The original article contains 314 words, the summary contains 182 words. Saved 42%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Dictator chimes in to remind people there are worse takes than ‘caring about Palestinians is rude to Israel.’
They deliberately targeted civilians, en masse, and took hostages. Israel doing war crimes in response (or in general) does not absolve that organization.
Any label applied to Hamas can equally be applied to the IDF. One just has better budget so it can do it’s child murdering from miles away.
Fuck them both, frankly.
The IDF does not routinely storm Palestinian villages and shoot every man, woman, and child they see, and you know that.
Could they do a lot more to protect civilians during military operations, and should the be criticized for that? Absolutely. But if Hamas had the capabilities that the IDF has, Tel Aviv would be crater. There is a very meaningful difference between the groups and equating them is sheer intellectual laziness.
“Precision JDAM strike on apartment complex housing Hamas militants” and “Israelis massacred in their homes in brutal reign of terror” has the exact same result though: Dead innocent civilians. Women, children, babies, pensioners (although granted most people don’t live that long in Gaza).
Genocide might not be the aim of Israel (I’m sure they’d settle for “everyone in Gaza and the West Bank moving far away”), but when you’re pulling the lifeless body of your 6 year old niece from the ruins of their home, it’s sure going to feel that way.
The only hope I have that there can be peace was yesterday, when an elderly woman was released by Hamas, and as she was lead away, she turned and took the hand of her captor. Just for a second, there was genuine kindness and humanity. That’s the level of nuance needed for cooler voices to prevail over guns and bombs. I’m not sure many have it. I suspect this will cool down to the normal background level of death, and we’ll be here again in 5-10 years when it spikes again.
If Hamas had the same capabilities, there would likely be less violence because Israel would not be able to oppress, occupy, or encroach on Palestinian life. The one with more power doesn’t need to use all of their strength, whereas the one struggling under the boot of the other will fight with all of their strength and use whatever is available to them
there would likely be less violence
Once the Nazi like mass killings stopped, the violence would end.
If Hamas had the same capabilities, there would likely be less violence because Israel would not be able to oppress, occupy, or encroach on Palestinian life
With all respect, this take is so detached from reality that I am literally incapable of responding to it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_African_National_Congress#Political_violence
Terrorist is one side of the coin.
I was just going to post something similar,
“Mandela generated controversy throughout his career as an activist and politician, having detractors on both the right and the radical left. During the 1980s, Mandela was widely labelled a terrorist by prominent political figures in the Western world for his embrace of political violence. According to Thatcher, for instance, the ANC was “a typical terrorist organisation”. The US government’s State and Defense departments officially designated the ANC as a terrorist organisation, resulting in Mandela remaining on their terrorism watch-list until 2008.”
Watching this Vice video led me to a similar conclusion. You can’t subject a group of people to oppression and not expect them to fight back.
Being a good person is not defined by what you fight for, that’s just your justification, your rationalization, your excuse.
It’s defined by your actions, how you fight. To go straight to the most extreme example for clarity’s sake, Nazis are not hated for why they fought, almost everyone was racist back then, we just didn’t know any better. It was a scientifically unanswered question back then.
They’re hated for what they did to unarmed and peaceful people. Mass butchery. If anyone can think that some civilian who has never picked up a weapon somehow deserves death, there is something wrong with their head.
While I strongly disagree with comparisons between the Nazis and HAMAS, they do have one thing in common–butchering the unarmed and unresisting. They didn’t have to do that, they could have just fought the soldiers and police. The armed people. The warriors.
And, here’s the thing - before the war they started, Gaza wasn’t under occupation. No settlements, no occupation. And the only reason there was a blockade is to try to prevent Hamas from getting what they need to launch rockets.
The West Bank is a different situation. But the dynamic in Gaza is clear - Hamas is the primary reason behind the plight of the citizens of Gaza. They will never build towards the future in peace, and them attacking Israeli soldiers isn’t fighting an occupier to free people but rather trying to kill the defenders to enable a genocide.
I would argue that the war did not “begin” with HAMAS. Instead, the war between Jews and Palestinians in the Middle East has been going for around a century now, never stopping, only pausing sometimes, and frequently changing shape and scope. Much like the Korean War though, it’s just one long war, still technically ongoing, but all parts of the same single war.
The actual responsibility for it probably belongs to the British more than anyone else, who had governance of the territory when it all began. But, while the British have a long and challenging history, there’s just no solutions to be found in putting the blame where it actually belongs–with men long dead of old age.
It definitely began in 2023. Sure, there have been other wars in the history of conflicts between Jews and Arabs, but they’re all individual wars.
I, personally, blame both the Jews and Arabs, but mostly the Arabs. It took until 1973 for them to give up on the idea of ethnically cleansing the area. Jewish Zionist nationalism is at least mostly respectful of the civil rights of their Arab minority.
Yeah, let’s not talk about the West Bank right now. That complicates my narrative. Doublespeak.
I mean, they’re two different topics, so yeah. The West Bank isn’t Gaza.
Removed by mod
Same could be said of the IDF.
They’re hated for what they did to unarmed and peaceful people. Mass butchery. If anyone can think that some civilian who has never picked up a weapon somehow deserves death, there is something wrong with their head.
So maybe reflect.
Proper reflection of all the facts should reveal that a great deal of wrongdoing has been done by both Israelis and Palestinians over the past century. Not sure how someone could miss that without very biased news consumption.
Regardless, if you begin to use the same tactics as your enemy, you become as bad as your enemy. Not better, not worse, just … as bad. You have to take different kinds of actions from your enemy if you wish to be a different kind of person than them.
Is this biased? Or maybe I should read corporate owned, state department controlled CNN to get the “facts.”
Would it be difficult to accept that perhaps both are biased?
I know that, do you?
It would have been very difficult to propose if I wasn’t aware of it. Considering I’m consistently critical of both of the sides, including my own, I think I’m proving it pretty well too.
It’s a good sign when you can criticize your own side. My side being currently pro-Israeli, as I imagine you’ve gathered. I can be pro-Israeli for this one incident, and then switch to being anti-Israeli again after HAMAS is dealt with. And unless Israel gets real peaceful real quick and frees Palestine, I will become anti-Israeli again.
But, I’m just slightly more anti-HAMAS first.
I actually support Macron’s proposal for a coalition against HAMAS, as I think a large international coalition force going in instead of the IDF would be far, far more likely to result in a lot more survival, and maybe even eventual freedom and peace for the Palestinians. The IDF is just too aggressive, too indiscriminate, and too willing to take the land. A coalition force going in instead would deprive the Israelis of a lot of their leverage though.
It’s complicated. You know? No easy answers that let you also stay a decent person. Which means a difficult answer is necessary, unless we want to compromise on our values. So maybe since we in the rest of the world helped cause this problem through our complicated histories and general unwillingness to really get deeply involved to help, we should also be willing to bleed to fix it. Together.
My current thinking, anyway.
If you “fight back” by murdering festival goers and civilians, you’re the bad guy. Hamas also knew that their attack would bring about a heavy response, but they don’t mind because they just use the Palestinian people as a human shield. Hamas are not freedom fighters, and if they had control of the region it would be nothing more than what we’re currently seeing in Afghanistan with the Taliban in charge. You think Hamas will respect the rights of women, children, minority groups etc??
By the way Hamas is backed by Iran, Turkey, China, Russia… But they’re the good guys?
Your words are as meaningless as the 2,000 deaths of the Palestinian children.
Hamas is not “fighting back” but gruesomely torturing people to death like beasts. The are proud of that and publish the videos they take of their “victories”.
Source, or didn’t happen. Oh, look, I have one.
