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[–]penelopepnortneyBecome ungovernable 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Berletic is as thorough as usual in this excellent video. He made some great points beginning with the question of what the aim of Hamas was. Here's some of the background he covers in delving into what this was really about:

Current circles of power in Israel shaping policy are objectively in the wrong, there are UN resolutions explaining this, e.g., UN Security Council resolution 2334 adopted in 2016 that the settlements reflect a flagrant violation under international law and that all settlement activities must immediately and completely cease.

Not every group claiming to fight for Palestine is a legitimate resistance group. Hamas has a very troubled history and background, it stems from the Muslim Brotherhood which like Israel was a creation of the British Empire that continued to be used by the US as it succeeded the British Empire in its pursuit of global hegemony. It's been used all around the region, including Palestine, to control and impede resistance, to perpetuate occupation not end it.

It works very similar to how ISIS and Al Queda work. You have the US invade and militarily occupy a country, the people have a right to defend themselves and take up arms to expel a foreign invader. You'll find Al Queda crop up, begin operating in that country, and it may fight US troops but its aim is not to expel US forces, it's controlled opposition to create a perpetual pretext for the US to maintain its occupation. At the same time you'll find ISIS and Al Queda wiping out legitimate resistance; we've seen this in Iraq where Shia and Sunni Muslims were working together to expel the US when they invaded in 2003 then Al Queda came along and triggered a sectarian civil war, which took all the heat off the Americans and allowed the occupation to continue.

Getting back to Hamas, this is all relevant. It was the Muslim Brotherhood that came to power in Egypt after Hosni Mubarak was ousted during the so-called Arab Spring (Mubarak cooperated with the US for decades but would not agree to become part of a US-led front against Iran). The Muslim Brotherhood laid the foundation for the US-engineered regime change operation in Syria, and Hamas emerged out of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas itself fought alongside other US-backed militants in Syria.

And now we see them storming into Israeli held territory attacking military targets, which is legitimate, but we've also seen them capturing and killing civilians, which is indefensible. Do we even know what their real objective is? Is it to overrun the entire Israeli military, does anyone really think that's going to happen? I don't think so.

Hamas' actions allows Israel to justify, at least in the minds of its own population, the brutalization of people in Gaza; people in Gaza who have seen their families wiped out will blindly rally even more around Hamas; Hamas will carry out more atrocities and the Israeli people will rally even more around their government. This is called the "strategy of tension" and it's been used since the beginning of time and it's something the current global empire, the US-led unipolar world order, is using to drive Israeli-Palestinian hostilities which are in turn used to shape the entire region.

(this cloudflare BS is a royal PITA)

[–]stickdog[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Thanks for doing all of this heavy lifting.

[–]penelopepnortneyBecome ungovernable 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I'm an inveterate note-taker so it's not a huge stretch to share some of them. But thanks for the thanks!

[–]MeganDelacroix🤡🌎 detainee 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Berletic makes some good points. A fuller treatment of this subject should also include an examination of the supposedly coincidental and simultaneous failures of the Iron Dome, the Mossad, the Shin Bet, and the IDF, along with all of Israel's intelligence partners, because that's the only real mystery here.

No one is surprised Hamas would do this. What's surprising is that they succeeded.

but we've also seen them capturing and killing civilians, which is indefensible.

Gunning down unarmed civilians, hiding behind civilians, taking women and children hostage, executing prisoners, desecrating the dead, calling the families of the dead to mock them - these aren't things you do if you're trying to accomplish a military objective, or if you care about the lives of the people in Gaza. These are things you do to infuriate the enemy, and provoke a response that you hope turns into an international PR disaster. Purchased with the blood of your own people, but that's obviously a price Hamas has always been very willing to pay.