Israel-Hamas Thread II

[Nithavela]

You would rather get mad? Like it's a conscious choice?

There are some videos of people in the gaza strip rightfully blaming Hamas for the bombings, but generally there aren't a lot. Probably because of a mixture of the people in the Gaza strip standing behind Hamas on this and those who don't fearing retribution.

Here's an example from WWII. Downed allied aircrew beaten to death by your ordinary, run-of-the-mill citizens of a town that was destroyed by allied bombing. Rüsselsheim massacre - Wikipedia. But of course, the good burgers of Russelsheim should have sat down and rationally thought about who had started it. 'Hey, didn't we invade Poland? Verdammt, it was our fault!' Then they obviously would have got some sausages and sauerkraut and a few beers for the airmen and made sure they got home safely.

Luckily the allies didn't stop their bombing raids and invasion until they had brought germany down to submission. Nobody was sending in "humanitarian aid" into the third reich either.

 

[JosephZ]

I read through the description and while there may be something to it I don't believe that anyone can predict that because of A then B happens especially when dealing with the emotions and beliefs of human beings. It is far more complex than that. The report posted has several places where the authors appear to be grasping by using words such as maybe, possibly and 'evidence suggests'. I can't tell if they actually talked to terrorists to find out what really makes them tick or not; it does not seem they did (a fatal flaw IMO).

I've taken some excerpts from a book published in 2005 and posted them below. It includes some quotes from some Palestinian terrorists and would-be terrorists. Keep in mind that this book was written long before what has been taking place over the past couple of months and the years leading up to the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7th. It would be safe to say that the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza today is at least tenfold what it was at the time this book was written. There is zero doubt that a new generation of terrorists will emerge as a result of this current conflict, and their numbers will be huge. They will not only be a threat to Israel and to Jews around the world; they will also be a threat to those countries that support Israel and the citizens of those countries.

Root Causes of Terrorism
Myths, reality and ways forward
(2005)

...religious indoctrination is no longer central to the preparation of the bombers – especially for secular groups such as the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. But the iron fist of Ariel Sharon – the incursions into West Bank towns and refugee camps by Israeli armour and helicopter gunships, the mass arrests and lengthy curfews – has only increased the determination of those who would embrace martyrdom. In fact, it has no longer become a far-fetched conclusion that Sharon, by virtue of his reckless assault on Palestinians, has created a societal factory of suicide bombers, Palestinian resistance and ‘suicide bombing’ not only among Muslims, but also among Palestinian Christians, hitherto unaccustomed to consider resorting to such measures.

Many of the interviewees reported growing up or living in a repressed or limited socioeconomic status. Their ability to work was regulated, the ability to travel freely was severely restricted and there was a general impression that they were denied the opportunity to advance economically. There was a common theme of having been ‘unjustly evicted’ from their land, of being relegated to refugee status or living in refugee camps in a land that was once considered theirs. Many of the interviewees expressed an almost fatalistic view of the Palestinian–Israeli relationship and a sense of despair or bleakness about the future under Israeli rule. Few of the interviewees were able to identify personal goals that were separate from those of the organization to which they belonged.

The fact is unmistakable and the message comes over loud and clear: a deep sense of injustice beyond the stage of profound frustration and despair stands at the heart of the issue. The Palestinian drive for freedom has been hampered by Israeli occupation atrocities.

Almost every Palestinian young man has suffered severe hardship at the hands of the Israeli occupation, such as arrest, beatings, injury and deportation. ‘Every Palestinian, without exception, has felt the suffocating strangle of Israeli military control on Palestinian resistance and ‘suicide bombing’ their life'.

Arin Ahmed, a would-be bomber, during her conversation with the Israeli former minister of defence, Ben-Eliezer, unequivocally states that her motive for considering a ‘body attack’ on Israelis was not military or religious in nature. Rather, it was exclusively personal: ‘I was in distress. I was depressed … You [Israelis] killed my friend. We were friends for a year and a half’

Most experts feel that there is a common denominator among ‘suicide bombers’, that is the lack of a horizon, a lack of hope, that they are people who had lost faith in life. ‘Certainly, there is misery. Certainly, there is frustration. Certainly, they feel hopelessness’. This already bad situation for Palestinians is usually exacerbated by Israeli army military operations that ‘become a hothouse that produces more and more new suicide bombers’. Such operations ‘kindle the frustration, hatred and despair and are the incubator for the terror to come’.

Iyad Sarraj, a psychiatrist who heads the Gaza Community Mental Health Project, and who studied the bombers, and the would-be bombers who crossed his path, concludes that the motive behind ‘suicide bombing’ is rooted in trauma: injury to a father or brother in the First Intifada, or the death of a friend or even a distant relation in the present upheavals. To clarify this, he states that ‘in every case of suicide bombing, there is a personal tragedy or a trauma’. More specifically, ‘the people doing the suicide bombing today are the children of the First Intifada and they have witnessed or suffered personal trauma in one form or another that is humiliating’

Sarraj succinctly sums up the psychological dynamics behind ‘body bombings’ as follows:

The Palestinians have been driven to a state of hopelessness and despair, the kind of despair that comes from a situation that keeps getting worse, a despair where living becomes no different from dying. Desperation is a very powerful force – it is not only negative, but it can propel people to actions or solutions that would have previously been unthinkable. […] The rapid Israeli military deployment and its immediate shoot-to-kill policy have deepened the sense of victimization, helplessness and exposure of the Palestinian masses. […] Suicide bombing is an act of ultimate despair, a horrific reaction to extremely inhuman conditions in a seriously damaged environment of hopelessness. Suicide bombing is the ultimate cry for help.

For Shafiq Masalha, a clinical psychologist and lecturer at the Tel Aviv and Hebrew Universities, who conducted research on the dreams of Palestinian children between the ages of 10 and 11, there is an abnormally high percentage, 15 per cent, who dream of becoming martyrs, which indicates ‘that … life is very difficult, to the point that children are starting to think of death’, and ‘that a certain image has been drawn in people’s minds that the martyr will enjoy a wonderful life in heaven’.

Istish-hadiyyin (‘suicide bombers’) are by and large motivated by sights of hurt they have witnessed. Therefore, most of them are moved to act by their sweeping desire to take revenge. The continuation of Israeli brutalities serves as a fierce provocation for many Palestinian youngsters to expend their life of hopelessness and despair for the sake of their society. Most of the Istish-hadiyyin tend to be young, aged 18–27, unemployed, poor and witnesses of torture and/or death at the hands of Israeli soldiers. As the will of the shaheed, Hisham Ismail Abd-El Rahman Hamed (who blew himself up in November 1994, killing three Israeli soldiers and wounding two Israelis) shows, the Palestinian resistance and ‘suicide bombing’ feeling of hurt is always present.

‘Dear family and friends! I write this will with tears in my eyes and sadness in my heart. I want to tell you that I am leaving … because … this… is by all means more important than staying alive on this earth’.

The will of another shaheed, Salah Abed El Hamid Shaker, who blew himself up with another shaheed at Beit Lid on January 1995, killing 18 Israelis and wounding 36, is even more illustrative:

‘I am going to take revenge upon the … enemies of humanity’.

Ariel Merari, a psychologist at Tel Aviv University has depicted ‘that intense struggles produce several types of people with the potential willingness to sacrifice themselves for a cause’. An attacker might be concerned with ‘imitating the glorious acts of others, responding to a perception of enormous humiliation and distress, [and with] avenging the murder of comrades and relatives’.

The story of Ayat Al-Akhrass is particularly poignant. A young 18-year-old girl from Deheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem blew herself up on 29 March 2002, killing two and injuring 28 Israelis in the process. Ayat did not seem to suffer personal disturbances from the brutally harsh conditions of life in the refugee camp. Spectacularly beautiful, she was top in her class and engaged to be married. But the cruel living conditions in her family’s one-room home in the camp and the ongoing sights of Palestinians, especially children, brutalized by the Israeli army triggered her desire to take revenge and to send a deep outcry to the inept Arab army generals, as her will demonstrates:

‘Do view my martyrdom as an attempt to embarrass you and to break the silence that engulfs you while our people are being slaughtered’.

Indeed, her action was a testimony to how some young Palestinians barely beginning their lives react to conditions and circumstances around them. Ayat represents a great loss to Palestinian society, to no less an extent that she did to the lives she lost with her. She was as bright as a young lady of her age might like to be. She left home on a Friday morning to go to school for makeup classes lost because of the curfews. Not even her would-be husband could tell. She knew exactly what she was doing: As the story goes, she warned some Palestinian women at the site of her bombing to leave immediately so that they would not be hurt. Her story resonated loudly and widely in the Arab world. Desperation is certainly to blame, not personal though, but national and political.

Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah views the rewards a shaheed seeks in psycho-religious terms. Explaining how one considers becoming a shaheed, Nasrallah says: "Imagine you are in a sauna. It is very hot but you know that in the next room there is air conditioning, an armchair, classical music and a cocktail. So you pass easily into the next room. That is how I would explain the mind of the martyr to a Westerner."

Perceived injustice has long been recognized a central factor in understanding violence generally and terrorism specifically, dating back to some of the earliest writings. In the mid-1970s, Hacker concluded that “remediable injustice is the basic motivation for terrorism”. A desire for revenge or vengeance is a common response to redress or remediate a wrong of injustice inflicted on another. It is not difficult to imagine that “one of the strongest motivations behind terrorism is vengeance, particularly the desire to avenge not oneself but others. Vengeance can be specific or diffuse, but it is an obsessive drive that is a powerful motive for violence toward others, especially
Psychology of Terrorism people thought to be responsible for injustices”

Terrorist groups can endure military strikes, ‘targeted assassinations’ and other harsh measures not because the people and resources lost are not important, but because the violence works to increase the motivation of more members than it decreases, and works to attract more support and sympathy to the group than it frightens away.

When Israel kills Hamas members and imposes other sanctions on Palestinian communities, they increase the sense of perceived injustice, particularly considering the high loss of innocent life, driving more recruits into extremist groups and facilitating increased sympathy and support for these groups not only within the West Bank and Gaza, but further afield among the international community. As a result, Israel may win skirmish after skirmish in these terms but still find itself unable to establish lasting peace and stability until other counter-terrorism policies are given greater priority and prominence.

Ultimately, the use of aggressive measures to combat terrorism can be both justifiable and legal. Frequently, they also successfully fulfil a number of important (though usually short-term) objectives. However, if past experience is anything to go by, defeating or diminishing the threat of terrorism in the long-term is not something that such measures are proficient at doing.

 

[Nithavela]

The principle of the matter being discussed is the same. Kill someone's family and they don't sit around and muse on who was ultimately at fault. Revenge is the immediate reaction. To the point in the example given of everday citizens beating people to death that weren't even actively involved.

Consider a man who is not an active Hamas supporter. His life has been made a lot harder by Israel's policies. He's doing it tough. Maybe he knows what Hamas did to provoke Israel. But he's not part of the problem. But then his entire apartment block is blown to bits. By Israel. His family is dead. Buried in the rubble. What do you honestly think will be his reaction? If the pilot who dropped the bomb was shot down then tell me that we wouldn't have exactly the same situation as happened in Russelsheim. They'd be parading his dead body through the streets.

"Parading dead bodies through the streets" is how the palestinians started this war.

 

[Bradskii]

Luckily the allies didn't stop their bombing raids and invasion until they had brought germany down to submission. Nobody was sending in "humanitarian aid" into the third reich either.

Congratulations on managing to formulate a complete post without making any attempt to address in any way whatsoever what it was in reply to.

 

[Bradskii]

"Parading dead bodies through the streets" is how the palestinians started this war.

I don't know whether you'll read the excerpt from the paper that @JosephZ posted above. But if you do, I do know how you'll respond. By, yet again, telling us how bad Hamas is. Yet again missing the point completely.

 

[Bradskii]

In the mid-1970s, Hacker concluded that “remediable injustice is the basic motivation for terrorism”. A desire for revenge or vengeance is a common response to redress or remediate a wrong of injustice inflicted on another. It is not difficult to imagine that “one of the strongest motivations behind terrorism is vengeance, particularly the desire to avenge not oneself but others. Vengeance can be specific or diffuse, but it is an obsessive drive that is a powerful motive for violence toward others

And that was written 50 years ago...

Well done on posting those excerpts. But if people can't accept the logic of what has already been explained, then I'm afraid that all you posted will fall of deaf ears.

 

[Nithavela]

Congratulations on managing to formulate a complete post without making any attempt to address in any way whatsoever what it was in reply to.

Claiming that a post was off topic is so much easier than engaging with it. I understand.

 

[Nithavela]

I don't know whether you'll read the excerpt from the paper that @JosephZ posted above.

I won't.

 

[Bradskii]

Claiming that a post was off topic is so much easier than engaging with it. I understand.

So you can ignore a post and head off in directions that you think might suit whatever other argument you presume it supports (it doesn't), but complain when I refuse to be dragged off into the forum undergrowth.

That's a little rich...

 

[Bradskii]

I won't.

I'm sure someone was just complaining about not engaging with points being made. And as the very detailed and comprehensive post by @JosephZ was specifically on point and exactly detailed the very points you are choosing to ignore, then...I'm not surprised that you won't bother reading it.

Too much information perhaps. Maybe the snippet about 4 posts up that I quoted might suffice.

 

[o_mlly]

... what are you trying to say?

Exactly what I wrote. Try reading the post.

 

[Bradskii]

Exactly what I wrote. Try reading the post.

I did. You didn't write anything about children. But you posted a picture of some poor kid with an assault rifle. Now what in heaven's name do child soldiers have to do with the current problem? Are you trying to imply something? Let's hear the reason for it.

And this is the kid: Sign the Petition

'Evelyn, from Uganda, was only 10 years old when a militia group pillaged her village, killed her family and took the little girl to be part of their army. Forced to kill or be killed, Evelyn suffered from physical, mental and emotional abuse until she escaped.'

Why use the picture of a physically abused ten year old girl from Uganda in this thread?

 

[o_mlly]

... desire to take revenge.

... moved to act by their sweeping desire to take revenge.

... am going to take revenge

... triggered her desire to take revenge

... A desire for revenge or vengeance is a common response

Revenge is an act of vindictiveness; justice, of vindication. The intense effort to avenge oneself or others can easily become corrupting, morally reducing the avenger’s status to that of the perpetrator. Two wrongs do not make a right and (ethically speaking) never can. Degrading another only ends up further degrading oneself.​

Don’t Confuse Revenge With Justice: Five Key Differences

Revenge can masquerade as justice, but it frequently ends up perverting it.

www.psychologytoday.com

​

​

 

[o_mlly]

Now what in heaven's name do child soldiers have to do with the current problem?

https://www.timesofisrael.com/at-annual-summer-camps-hamas-trains-kids-to-fire-guns-kidnap-soldiers/

Exclusive | Israeli survivors explain how Hamas indoctrinates Gazan children to become ‘the terrorists of today’

“These children are taught hate in their textbooks. They’re taught, ‘If you have six Jews and you kill four of them, how many Jews do you have left?’ literally,” said …

nypost.com

 

[o_mlly]

Why use the picture of a ...

... child soldier?

Does Hamas recruit children to be soldiers? Are children carrying lethal weapons still just innocent children?

The posts in this thread it appears generate from two different kinds of posters: 1) those who are emotional about the issue, and 2) those who are rational. The emotional posters rightly point out, "Oh, the humanity of it all!" and throw up their hands. The rational posters feel the same disgust at the loss of innocent lives but engage reason in search of a just resolution.

 

[Bradskii]

https://www.timesofisrael.com/at-annual-summer-camps-hamas-trains-kids-to-fire-guns-kidnap-soldiers/

Exclusive | Israeli survivors explain how Hamas indoctrinates Gazan children to become ‘the terrorists of today’

“These children are taught hate in their textbooks. They’re taught, ‘If you have six Jews and you kill four of them, how many Jews do you have left?’ literally,” said …

nypost.com

So why not come out and say that children are legitimate targets? Why not post those links to start with and make your position clear? Why just the insinuation. Which is all your posts are. Why the reticence? Be specific. We were discussing the death toll and that it includes a distressing number of children.

And your response? Posting pictures of child soldiers in Uganda and links trying to make the case that hey, some of those Palestinian children were trained killers. Is that it? They are part of your just war? Killing kids? How about you don't beat around the bush and just say what you mean. Even in the post above you make sure the onus is on others to make the call. You make it a question. Why not make a statement instead?

 

[o_mlly]

So why not come out and say that children are legitimate targets?

? Because they aren't legitimate targets.

The rest of your post evidence the truth of my claim about posters who are ruled only by their emotions. I hope you get a grip on yourself.

 

[Bradskii]

? Because they aren't legitimate targets.

Maybe this is the new MO. If the Israelis themselves are giving us the death toll despite so many denying the numbers then what else is there but to accept them. Including the number of dead children.

Except to post pictures of child soldiers. To link to stories of Hamas Summer Camps. To ask if a kid carrying a weapon is actually an innocent child. Yeah, we all get the implications. I just don't know if you're trying to convince others or yourself.

But it seems we haven't hit the low point yet.

 

[o_mlly]

Yeah, we all get the implications.

Well, it may be just you.

You do know the difference between "inferences" and "implications", don't you? Try to apply that important distinction in any further mind-reading claims.

There is zero doubt that a new generation of terrorists will emerge as a result of this current conflict, and their numbers will be huge. They will not only be a threat to Israel and to Jews around the world; they will also be a threat to those countries that support Israel and the citizens of those countries.

"Will be huge"? Historically, one could substitute other conflicted groups for Israelis and Palestinians: American Indians - European colonists, Indian Indians - British, Irish -British, Dutch - South Africa, French - Northern Africa, Portuguese - South America, etc. I don't think the prediction "will be huge" is historically evidenced.

 

[Bradskii]

You do know the difference between "inferences" and "implications", don't you?

Your implications are clear.

Imply: to express, suggest or show something without stating it directly.

Maybe you think that lets you off the hook. It doesn't.