Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders said Sunday he doesn’t know that a ceasefire is possible in the Israel-Hamas war with “an organization like Hamas” involved.
“I don’t know how you can have a ceasefire, (a) permanent ceasefire, with an organization like Hamas, which is dedicated to turmoil and chaos and destroying the state of Israel,” Sanders told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” Sunday.
I keep thinking about “how much responsibility does a people have for its government?”
I’d say that Israel has zero moral claim to blame Gazans for Hamas, for one specific reason: the blockade on weapons into Gaza.
I think that if Gazans’ natural right to arm themselves were respected, it would be a different story. But there is literally no way for the Gazans to depose their ruling junta, because (a) that junta isn’t offering any elections and (b) the means to do it more directly are being denied to them.
Like, I think that we in the USA bear more responsibility for our government than Gazans bear for Hamas, because we have regular elections and we have access to weapons. We have two layers of escape clause from our government; they don’t have any.
I agree Hamas != Palestine. Hamas is just using the Palestinians as hostages. Like a “bodyguard” that you didn’t hire, can’t get to stop following you, and who regularly attacks people then hides behind you.
… holy shit, this is peek shitamericanssay
I agree on the Hamas != Palestine though, but I feel like the citizens of Gaza are not completely without blame in this.
This. In a modern society there’s no natural right (or even a need) to own firearms.
And it’s hard to imagine that Hamas could smuggle weapons, build rockets in basements, set up launchers between apartment blocks, fire missiles and return to step one - if the people of Palestine actually opposed them. But since they are able to do all of this, at least a significant portion of the people must actively support them and basically everyone else needs to tolerate their presence and activities.
Are you then advocating for supplying weapons to Gaza?
Do you feel that would be a wise decision?
Because most Israelis are pissed at their PM for allowing Qatari funding to Gaza and Hamas. I would love to see their reaction to weapons being supplied to them. It would probably look pretty similar to what they are doing now.