Key points:
- The federal government has announced a plan to make it a criminal offence to perform the Nazi salute in Australia.
- Meanwhile, hundreds of prominent Australians have signed a letter denouncing anti-Semitism and racism.
- Jewish and Islamic groups say there has been a huge rise in anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
The world according to Downpunx
Genocide against Jews, bad.
Genocide against Palestinians, good.
I seriously think he was sarcastic, but you are damn serious. I don’t think anyone suggest here in the federation that genocide is good. But there is opinion that even for the sake of Palestinians, or especially for the sake of Palestinians,Hamas should be gone, otherwise peace is not possible. Hamas is not somebody anyone should support if they care about future prospects for Palestinian people.
We can probably get behind the idea that Hamas shouldn’t exist.
But the act of trying to root out Hamas cannot involve the mass slaughter of thousands of innocent civilians. No, not even if Hamas is “using human shields”. And not even if those innocent civilians did support Hamas. Is it any surprise that someone might voice support for the one organisation that’s actually doing something to try to fight against the people that have been enacting a genocide against them for decades?
Since October 7th, Israel has killed ten times as many people as Hamas has. This is including human rights workers, journalists, and healthcare professionals. And that’s without even going in to the apartheid conditions Palestinians have been forced to put up with for decades before then, and all the people Israel has killed before then.
This is not a matter of some surgical strike against terrorists. It’s genocide. Genocide being committed by a nation which identifies itself strongly with the one group that you would think, given their history, should be most strongly attuned to how terrible it is to commit genocide. However, it’s important not to conflate the two. While Israel likes to think of itself as representative of all Judaism, it is not. Many Jews rightly speak out against the genocide, and criticism of Israel is not antisemitism.
All I can say - suggest the alternative. How one can remove Hamas without such war?
No. That’s not up to me. I’m not a military strategist. Nor do I have any expertise in anything remotely close to this. One does not need to be a chef to be a food critic.
All I know is, if you can’t conduct your war without doing war crimes and crimes against humanity, stop doing your war. It makes you worse than the people you’re claiming to be against.
Well, it is easy to say - the fighting must stop, but consequences of this decision is easily seen - Hamas will stay in power, blockade of Gaza Strip will continue, there will be more attacks by Hamas in future, Israel will retaliate and Palestinians will continue to live in open prison with periodic bombing. It is intellectual dishonesty to call for war end and say “it is somebody else problem” to avoid what I have described above. If you do not have alternative solution then calling for war to stop does mean you calling for open prison and mass casualties in foreseeable future with no end in sight.
I don’t need to come up with a solution, because it doesn’t matter what the response actually is, only that committing war crimes cannot be an acceptable answer.
If there are war crimes during this war, for sure they should be stopped. But you are advocating stopping the whole war with Hamas. For which you have to suggest alternative, or admit that you are OK with Palestinians to suffer further in open sky prison with periodic bombing as Israel will react on future Hamas attacks. There is no third option.
Mass punishment of civilians is 100% a war crime.
I saw very similar questions being asked back in the day about the IRA.
What are you implying? IRA was hunted by authorities.
And a situation deemed unsolvable and irrevocable, too far gone…ended not in genocide, but the good friday accords.
You are implying that there is some kind of analogy here. But the only similarity I see here that both IRA and Hamas are terrorist organizations. But their goals and operation style and size are very different. I have no hope whatsoever that Hamas would reject their main purpose - to destroy Israel.
If you want to get rid of Hamas, give Palestinians equal rights. Take away their cause. Make it convenient to give up the fight and choose peace.
If you want to give Hamas more young men to fight for them, then steal their houses and blow up their mothers, sisters, and daughters.
The current government of Israel? It’s on Hamas’ side. It’s creating new recruits for them every day. It’s giving them great material to turn into propaganda. It’s escalating the violence.
Yes, that’s the end goal. Or two stat solution.
Mate, we’re talking about Downpunx here.
He is 100% serious and he has come out saying he doesn’t give a shit about Palestinians and that they’re animals in the past among other fucked up things.
Look in any thread mentioning Israel or Palestine and you’ll find him there 7/10 times.
His post is still sarcastic, even if he believes it is true.
Ah you’re just a pro-Israeli chud. Don’t know why I acted in good faith with you.
For a while, I thought he might be a pro-Palestinian troll, but you’re almost certainly right that downpunx is 100% serious.
They’re clearly not well. People should downvote and move on, rather than feed the troll. Even negative attention is still attention.
Downpunxx is fucking awful, but he’s genuine in his opinions. What is with this obsession over calling people trolls? You say he isn’t a troll, then say not to feed the trolls. Why call someone you know isn’t a troll a troll? Why does everyone want to use the word troll so much?
@DroneRights I think it’s because we lack terminology. In the old days he probably would have been called a griefer.
He posts the same copypasta dozens of times around the fediverse, often with name-calling addressed to anyone who reads it. It’s not a genuine engagement, it’s designed to annoy.
He may be motivated to act like a griefer because of underlying feelings that make him want to lash out, but that doesn’t change the nature of it.
Whatever happened to just calling someone a shithead? That’s what I use and it’s plenty good enough.