Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday called out other countries for not demanding Hamas surrender.
“What is striking to me is that even as, again, we hear many countries urging the end to this conflict, which we would all like to see, I hear virtually no one saying – demanding of Hamas that it stop hiding behind civilians, that it lay down its arms, that it surrender. This is over tomorrow if Hamas does that. This would have been over a month ago, six weeks ago, if Hamas had done that,” Blinken said during a press briefing at the State Department Wednesday.
“How can it be that there are no demands made of the aggressor and only demands made of the victim,” Blinken went on to say.
The strong comments from Blinken come as the United Nations Security Council continues to negotiate a resolution calling for a suspension in fighting and encouraging more humanitarian aid into the beleaguered Gaza Strip, and as the United States’ support for the resolution remains unresolved.
If this was any other country, they would never say that as a foreign transgressor enters. However, Palestine is not recognized as a state. So Israel, presumably, has not declared war and is just killing civilians as a means to anti terrorism. Even the USA after 9/11 sought valid reasons for war, even if they turned out to be fabricated. Now the veil is gone.
To analogize with another ongoing conflict: the Ukrainian war could be over tomorrow if Ukraine unconditionally surrendered to Russia, but they’re sure as fuck not going to do that, nor should they.
Also, to be clear: I am absolutely not saying that Hamas are the good guys here. They are definitely not the good guys. But addressing an incredibly complex and nuanced situation in such a reductive fashion (“Hamas should surrender unconditionally right now”) is deeply unhelpful, and ignores why Hamas came into being in the first place, and why they further developed into such a threatening force in the region.
“We wouldn’t have to kill so many civilians if the criminals would stop committing crimes.”
The indiscriminate killings and beatings will continue until morale improves
Hamas should surrender unconditionally because there is a 0% chance of them winning this war and a negligible chance of them surviving this war.
That’s when you surrender.
You don’t appear to understand how terrorist organizations work.
Can you link me to the part where Ukraine fired thousands of rockets at Russian cities and started a war by raping and murdering a thousand innocent people?
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You are intentionally misrepresenting what I said.
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They are absolutely not.
They are though. I get what you’re saying, but Israel is modern Nazi Germany. There aren’t many ways to be worse than Nazi Germany.
Do you also think the Viet Cong was bad and a terrorist organization? They used similar guerilla tactics, and also attacked villages and took hostages. These are simply the most effective tactics for driving out an occupying force, and they wouldn’t be necessary if the oppressors weren’t there in the first place.
Hamas isn’t great, but they sure as hell are better than Israel. Even their most damaging attack on October 7 doesn’t compare to the shit Israel has been repeatedly doing for over half a century now. Nor does it compare to the current Palestinian genocide.
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The fuck are you talking about?
Hamas is bad. The Israeli government is also bad. They are bad for different reasons. Neither of them have defensible or humane long-term strategies. Neither of them are better than the other. They are both bad.
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No it’s not.
I’ll reiterate: Hamas is bad. The Israeli Government is bad. Both Palestinian and Israeli civilians (note: Israeli “settlers” should not be considered noncombatants) are innocent, and just trapped in the middle.
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Gaza is civilian. It’s a city, an extremely densely populated city. So if Hamas is anywhere in their own land, Israel can make this accusation. What bullshittery to think an invading country slaughtering your population gets to make demands of the where your military is allowed to be in your own country.
It’s similar to the excuse Putin uses. He’s just “defending Russian citizens in XYZ.” It’s cart blanche to do as you please where you please.
I don’t recall Ukraine going into Russia and murdering and raping civilians. Doesn’t mean Israel has any right to slaughter citizens but these are not the same situation.
And if you go back far enough in time, Palestinians never did anything to the jews and yet Israel was created from from Palestine. Maybe Putin should have said the Russian sky magician had promised the land of Ukraine to the Russians, I hear thats very legal and binding.
Hamas didn’t do these things on a large scale (according to the evidence we have). Before blaming all the deaths on Hamas we need numbers for how many Israelis Israel killed in their response to the attack.
Let’s invade a country, then blame the war on the people for fighting back and tell the world “well if they wouldn’t fight back there would be no war, so it’s all their fault really”.
Fighting back does is not the same as terrorism
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