My comments weren’t directed at you or anyone here, that’s just me complaining about bad takes you hear from people.
Speaking of which, this Cenk Uygar interview that seems that has blown up. It’s astounding to me how positive most of the reactions are despite what I can only call naivety, flawed logic, and lack of historical knowledge and context.
1) Killing 3x the number of Palestinians- first I would say who knows what the real numbers are given Hamas cannot be trusted with much of anything, but these numbers are presumed to include Hamas militants. Regardless, he is promoting the narrative that Israels response is pure vengeance and seeking to intentionally target civilians… and that presumably had Israel apparently could have targeted 1000 civilians and then should have stopped because that’s what would be a proportional response.
2)”Everyone can have sovereignty except Palestinians because they are seen as savages and Muslims are too violent and can’t control themselves and therefore are occupied”. In fact, it’s is the Hamas, many Palestinians, and much of the Arab/Muslim world (esp historically) who deny Israel’s right to exist (or even for Jews to exist). Hama’s charter literally states their existence is to destroy Israel. Gaza has not been occupied since 2006 but was previously occupied and was subsequently blockaded because of their savage government hell bent on murdering Jews. 10/7 demonstrated EXACTLY what happens when you allow people like Hamas to their own devices. Egypt also blockades Gaza, yet ZERO comment- perhaps he should ask why. And fun fact, there are numerous Muslim countries that are sovereign nations. And if Israel felt the need to occupy all a Muslims, they’d never turned Gaza back over, or the territory they seized from Egypt and Jordan and Syria in the six day war. Or as a gesture of good will turned over the Temple Mount despite being the most important landmark in Jewish history. I’m sure Cenk has no problem recognizing that religious radicals or virtually any denomination can be extremely dangerous. And sadly violence goes part and parcel with radical Islam.
2) “Bombs kill people” - Israel has endured decades of unguided rocket attacks, suicide bombers, etc. People literally have to build bomb shelters in their homes. While I think it’s terrible to even have to think about civilians being bombed, it’s disgusting for Cenk to play this one sided emotional game that only Palestinians had to worry about their children been incinerated by explosives. And this is a prime example of his own bigotry of low expectations, that Hamas is not responsible for the consequences of its actions… and this is so common. The irony is that clearly he sees these people as such savages that their actions cannot be judged the same as if a westernized nation.
3) How to destroy Hamas “do what America did in the Osama bin Laden raid”. What a joke- and this guy think’s he’s smart enough to be be president? Bin Laden was hiding out in another country, isolated in a compound, protected by a handful of people. I guess Cenk can casually ignore the decade of warfare in Afghanistan prior to finding Bin Landen involving many hundreds of thousands of soldiers, thousands of soldiers dying, hundreds of thousands of Afghans being killed- likely hundreds of thousands of civilians… and let’s not even talk about the wake of suffering induced by the implosion caused by our disastrous exit. Or all the related wars stemming out of war on terror motivated by the hunt for Bin Laden. There are tens of thousands of Hamas fighters embedded among millions of civilians, discerning the two will likely be a challenge. Plus they have 300 miles of tunnels and frankly are far more sophisticated than Bin Laden, so specially considering they are effectively a government. You will never find a single hostage by publicly sending special forces door to door.
4) “Are they looking for the hostages”. Cenk says no. Is he really this dumb to think Israel is advertising the tactics and progress or locating hostages? For all we know as the public most of them could be dead already. Shouldn’t Cenk be calling for a Hamas to release them? Or why not calling for the Palestinian people to demand their government release them? I can tell you there is an unspoken sentiment in Israel that while everyone wants to see the hostages safety returned, there is no expectation Hamas will do that and this situation has become frankly far bigger than the lives of the hostages. Most people outside of Israel may not understand this but I guarantee you likely every Israeli hostage would rather die than be returned at the expense of some benefit to the terroriet and/or detriment to a Israel’s safety
5) “This is genocide against Palestinians”’ - Again, 10/7 demonstrates Hama’s genocidal intentions which is why they can’t even be trusted to use cement for reasons other than war. If Israel is seeking the Genocide of a Palestinians, they’ve done a very bad job their their population exponentially increasing??
5) “bombings that cause Civilian deaths is terrorism” - what do you call the people that are courage the use of human shield's? Why is there NEVER any responsibility given to Hamas and how their actions- politically, legally, economically, militarily, etc affect Palestinians?
6) “How are the Palestinians suppose to rise up against Hamas if they don’t have elections.” LOL- The same way every other country has done this throughout history. Should I assume Cenk believes the US gained independence from Britain by Britain granting the US elections? Once again here is the Bigotry against Palestinians that they have no capability for self determination and that’s everyone else’s fault because they’re just too weak of people, therefore are 100% free of even the slightest degree responsibility of their life circumstances. If they indeed want new leadership, Hamas is not going to be the one to provide them with the election opportunity.
7) “We need a two state solution” - There is only is only one side of that rejected every peace deal and another side that has offered many- including some unbelievably generous. Cenk misses the overarching theme -Hamas has no interest in peace
And as