LogFAQs > #976880312

Yellow posted...

While true, even if Palestine was nothing but Hamas terrorists, it doesn't change the fact that their existence is something Israel could prevent if they ceased their apartheid.

Just in case someone pops up and says "look, 90% of Palestinians support Hamas", you know.

Yes, 100%. Palestinians support Hamas because the alternative is supporting an apartheid state that wants them all dead but doesn't quite have enough international support to achieve that yet, so it oppresses them to an inexcusable degree. If Israel weren't bent on turning Palestine into an open-air concentration camp, significantly fewer Palestinians would harbour enough resentment against them to engage in terrorist attacks. Because they're so mistreated, it's easy for terrorist organizations to find people desperate and disenfranchised enough to throw their lives away lashing out in anger. That becomes significantly harder when most people are content and comfortable and don't actually have anything to be angry about.

It's something a lot of people seem to struggle with: You can understand and even agree with terrorists' motivations without agreeing with or justifying terrorism. For an example that most will find easier to swallow, Nelson Mandela was a terrorist. Quite unambiguously so. He spent 27 years in prison for the terrorist acts he committed in his fight against South African apartheid. That doesn't mean his cause was not just, it means he went about fighting for it in a manner that wasn't. And then his time in prison gave him an opportunity to move past that and seek reconciliation and a peaceful resolution, such that he's remembered not for being a terrorist, but for being a great political leader.

Now, I'm not about to suggest that Hamas is the same as Mandela and those that fought with him, nor do I think characterizing them as "freedom fighters" is altogether accurate (as much as they're ostensibly fighting for freedom, they're focusing too much on spreading terror and not enough on trying to make strategic gains to secure a better life for Palestinians), but it's still analogous. That some people resort to terrorism in fighting for a cause does not invalidate that cause. You'd think Americans would understand that, but contextualizing one's own national history is a skill many people lack.