Thread by @aliamjadrizvi

Either you’re pro-Palestinian or pro-Hamas.

You can’t be both.

Some things to note about this current conflict:

(thread)

➡️ Hamas is more loyal to the Iran’s mullah leadership than it is to its own Palestinian people. It is a despicable group that fires rockets from its own hospitals and schools to get Israel to bomb them so it can exploit dead Palestinian children to get the world’s sympathy. Hamas is no more loyal to the Palestinian people than the Islamic Republic of Iran is to the Iranian people.

➡️ Egypt controls the southern border of Gaza. There are two million people trapped in Gaza, and they’re partly trapped there because of Egypt, the largest Arab country in the world. The blockade of the Gaza Strip is cooperatively maintained both by Israel and Egypt. Whenever Gazans have been bombed by Netanyahu’s Israel and wanted to escape across their southern border, Egypt has said no. If all the “pro-Palestinian” activists celebrating Hamas truly cared about the Palestinian people, they would also have an accountability campaign for Egypt.

➡️ Netanyahu has badly weakened Israel in three significant ways:

1. He is aiming for a single-state solution which will eventually have a population that is over 50% Arab. If they get the right to vote, Israel will no longer be a Jewish state. If they don’t get the right to vote, Israel will no longer be a democracy. Netanyahu is leading Israel to being either a Jewish state or a democracy, but not both.

2. Israel was one of the few issues that always had 100% bipartisan support from both Republicans and Democrats in the United States. Netanyahu figured it would be a great idea to torpedo that and alienate Democrats during the Obama era, which also created a cleft between American Jews—who largely vote Democrat—and Israeli Jews.

3. With his recent judicial overhaul and dictator-like grabs for power domestically, Netanyahu has also further divided the Israeli people, deepening political divides more than ever. This is not unrelated to the massive intelligence failure that led to the deadliest terrorist attack in Israel’s history happening on his watch.

In many ways, Netanyahu isn’t any less of an existential threat to Israel than Iran.

Right now, here’s the way to think about this.

You’re a kid in school and another kid with a legitimate grievance against your grandparents (that wasn’t your fault or his) is coming at you to beat you up. You manage to subdue him—you’re sitting on top of him now, your hands pinning his wrists to the ground. “Let me go!” he says. “I don’t want to fight,” you say. “If I let you go, do you promise not to hit me?” But he’s silent. If you let him go, he punches you out. But if you don’t let him go, you’re a bully forcing yourself on this younger, poorer kid. It’s hopelessly deadlocked.

When Israel did try to loosen the grip in 2005, withdrawing from Gaza, dismantling all settlements, removing all settlers and soldiers, and opening the border for commerce, many resources were provided to spend on education, infrastructure, and trade. Hamas used them instead to amass weapons, build tunnels into Israel, and build bomb shelters, but only for its leaders. Notably, Gazan civilians weren’t allowed access to these bomb shelters. It has never been about the Palestinian people for Hamas.

People on both sides will tell you, “There are no two sides to this, there is only one right side.”

This is absolute, utter BS.

There is the side of Hamas’s terrorism and Netanyahu’s war crimes.

And there is the side of the Israeli and Palestinian civilians caught in the crossfire.

It’s not that hard.

And remember that this is still at heart a religious conflict. Read Exodus 23:31-32 or Deuteronomy 1:8 (among others) for Netanyahu’s completely irrational justification for settlement expansion. And read Surah 5:51, 59, or 60, or Hamas’s charters of 1988 or 2017 to understand its driving motivation.

Don’t listen to the “nothing to do with religion!” crowd. Religion poisons everything, religion kills, and that couldn’t be clearer in this case.

It’s been 75 years, and several generations of people have been born in this land on both sides.

You may have your opinion about the mistakes their grandparents and great-grandparents made, but none of the people who live there today have any other place to call home.

You are not obligated to pick sides on this issue, however hard you’re pushed.

Just know that Hamas is no friend of Palestine, and Netanyahu is no friend of Israel.