"Islamic people"? Try "Muslims".

"No,
Netanyahu
would do a "partial" ceasefire,
but he's not going to end this war until he's destroyed Hamas."

You mean
till Eltrumpster
can Steal our Democracy
making OUR Planet SAFE for
terrible toddlers posing as Adults
& ruling their countries with Iron Fists

then
bibi'll
just fuck-
ing Nuke 'Em

but for Now
if nutnyahoo stops
his Genocide cum Land grab
his ass'll be headed right straight to Court

& then
to The Hague for
his War Crimes Tribunals

"Ceasefire"?
not on bibi's
genocidal watch.

Everett Herald Staff will strike.
OK. Have a ball.

Sad news about that stabbing. Not to worry though, the people of Seattle are great about cooperating in police investigations. Just look at the recent shooting at Garfield HS.

Brakes giving out on a bus?
And to think the vehicle maintenance folks are all good union workers.

@3: midnight on Saturday on the waterfront, the perps (and the victim) were probably homeless/drug addicts, and there wouldn't have been many normals around to witness the attack.

bit of a different animal than Garfield's parking lot at lunch but go ahead and draw general conclusions about the 737K "people of Seattle."

You know that really picturesque hollow on the north face of Rainier in your picture? The dirt and rock that used to be there fell off in a lahar long ago, burying what's now Enumclaw 50-100 feet deep and reaching all the way to Puget Sound at what's now the Port of Tacoma.

And once again Belazel Smotrich says the quiet part out loud. He's got a plan (maybe it's in action already?) to prevent the West Bank from ever becoming an independent state. Israel would slowly annex the territory by settlements. Given that Netanyahu needs Smotrich's support to stay in the PM seat (and stall Netanyahu's corruption investigations), it's likely that Smotrich will get what he wants.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/21/middleeast/israel-west-bank-bezalel-smotrich-settlements-intl-latam/index.html

On the other hand, Netanyahu also said that the war in Gaza will soon move into a less intense phase, which is probably code for "we're going to let Hamas reoccupy territory we took from them, and otherwise we'll just bomb stuff when we feel like it."

@4 In Saudi America abortion is legal.

@6
It’s legal in many places in the US as well.
Washington state for instance.

@1: The proper term is now Muslxm Folx.

@3 You don't like unions? Didn't you say you were a Democrat?

Looks like the “progressives love Islam” trope from the Iraq War era is making a comeback. I guess if we’re going to be cursed with low rise jeans and trucker caps, jingoistic conservative talking points with no basis in logic or reality deserve a second time around, too.

4: I think that might have been an autocorrect on a typo.

Progressives don’t support Islamism, they are opposed to killing people indiscriminately for living under autocracy. Being universally pro-human rights is not an endorsement of anyone’s religious or political beliefs. They support the people, not their oppressors. This seems self-evident to me but I gather some people are committed to believing things that make no sense because it's politically expedient for them.

I remember reading comments on conservative blogs in the early 00s where people were like “why does the left love Islam so much??!? It makes no sense!!!!” They were always -this close- to getting it. It’s fascinating to think this idiotic belief has even deeper roots than the conservative brain rot of the post-9/11 years, but that goes a long way towards explaining how Reagan happened.

@13 GIYF. Maybe try a quick search before declaiming about 1.4 billion people?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism_and_progressivism_within_Islam

@13 Up is not down. There has never been a "love affair" between progressives and Islam but, in turn, conservatives have systematically supported islamists against secular reformers. If anything, progressives were "in love" with Arab secular nationalists (Nasser) who repressed religion, Arab nationalism was defeated by Israel and the US in 1967. which opened the door for the Muslim brotherhood. Similarly Islamists (the talibans and some say Bin Laden) were armed and financed by neocons (Brezinski) to create a quagmire for the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The Talibans were already highly motivated by preventing women from educating themselves. Thousands of Islamists converged to Afghanistan to fight the soviet infidels and eventually returned to their home countries to spread Islamism with ideology and weapons. Netanyahu is also well known for supporting Hamas against the secular PLO. etc...

@9
Nope. Never said those words.
I’ve said I wasn’t a republican, which is true. I’m politically nonbinary.
I was in a union when I worked for King County Metro Transit Division though. I would describe the union as both useless and invisible.

The good thing about the unions is the protections and negotiating power, ASaxman5537 dear.

The bad thing is that it often shelters incompetent workers who complain about the union, but are the first to run and hide behind it when management tries to get rid of them.

In the meantime, the current Metro contract secured a 17% raise for drivers and mechanics. That doesn't sound useless and invisible to me.

@5 Yes, as many astute observers have long been saying (and some Israel supporters have long been urging), it looks like the game plan in Gaza is to allow Hamas to keep what's left of it. This is not surprising because the only other remaining alternatives are (1) direct military governance, which the IDF has made clear it doesn't want to do and which would leave Israel extremely vulnerable elsewhere, or (2) giving it to the PA, which would unify its control over the occupied territories and almost surely lead to empowered demands for statehood and other unpalatable concessions. The big question remaining is whether Netanyahu, after insisting for months that his goal is nothing short of "total victory," can finesse this retreat from it and stay in office. It looks increasingly doubtful but his political skills should never be underestimated.

Belial Smotrich is the true face of Evil, and Sinwar is his Janus.

@21, As a general rule, people protest the actions of their own government and/or the allies their government actively supports.

Anyway I’ll go ahead and add political protest to the list of things conservatives intentionally misunderstand.

@24: “As a general rule, people protest the actions of their own government and/or the allies their government actively supports.”

Purely for the sake of argument, let’s assume that’s true. I submit an organization which intentionally violates every principle of Western civilization deserves rebuke by adherents of that civilization.

In particular, Hamas has a long-standing practice of using both civilians, and civilian infrastructure, in Gaza as shields when it attacks Israel and/or the IDF. At the very least, this practice has greatly increased the number of civilians in Gaza who have been killed, injured, crippled, or deprived of homes, running water, food, etc. by the Hamas-IDF war. Persons who loudly claim to care about such killings and deprivations remain either silent, or noticeably muted, when the topic is Hamas’ complicity in said atrocities. That’s a point always worth noting.

@4, 13, 21: It's not that we progressives have any love for Islam or Muslim majority nations, so much as the fact that we are not ignorant bigots and racists like you. We recognize that the animosity the Arab world has for the West is the result of a history of Western imperialism and racism that dates back to the Crusades. All the way up to Britain creating the modern state of Israel out of nothing in the British Mandate for Palestine. Progressives recognize that the folks behind the oppression and exploitation of the Muslim world are the same economic actors who exploit and oppress us. We recognize that the Oligarchs are our mutual enemy. Folks like you are too busy licking their boots to think for yourself.

@25, I submit that there is nothing stopping any American of any political persuasion from protesting Hamas if they’re so inclined — other than, perhaps, the complete futility of protesting someone who does not answer to you — but progressives are the only ones who are singled out for not doing it.

@16 The Taliban formed in 1994, years after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.

@19 Well, it's good you're so open-minded about condemning a billion and a half people. And that you are so sure that they all believe the same things.

@28 The leadership that formed the Taliban in 1994 were trained in Pakistan during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan with Saudi and US support.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban#Background

Penis cancer sounds like a fitting end to Donald Trump.

@28 As were the leaders of the Northern Alliance who fought against the Taliban.

@31 We were remarkably ecumenical about who we trained. Anyone who was opposed to the Soviets was fine with us, without regard to how they felt about religious tolerance or even the US itself. Bin Laden was seen as a great recruit because he brought his own funding from Saudi Arabia.

There were plenty of madrassas in Pakistan in the mid to late 80's filled with kids singing about Death to America.

@28-32 True enough, major fractions of the Mujaheddin (holy warrior) who fought the Soviets became the Taliban. Although, all Mujaheddin were motivated by their opposition to the modernization introduced by the pro-soviet governments, notably with respect to the emancipation of women. The Northern alliance split from the rest largely along ethnic lines (Uzbeks and Tajiks to the North and Pashtuns to the center and South)

Lahar
sounds
so Innocent

@5
the View
from Orting
is to Die for . you-
're looking nearly fuck-
ing Vertically . you'd Barely
have time for a nod Goodbye

perhaps it may
coincide with a 9.OH!
we'll wake up to a whole
New Landscape & Waterfront
Properties. the deeds'll be Interesting

or
trumphy
nukes The
Wrong People
oh well - we'll have
nothing to worry about

@26 "We recognize that the animosity the Arab world has for the West is the result of a history of Western imperialism and racism that dates back to the Crusades."

You might want to get your facts straight first. Muslims actually invaded Europe long before The Crusades (1095-1291). In the 700's a full 300 years before The Crusades Muslim invaders took over much of the Iberian Peninsula reaching as far north as Tours, France before being repelled. In fact Bob did you also know the sub-saharan slave trade was most likely larger and lasted much longer (up until WWI) than the transatlantic slave trade? Sounds like the Muslims were just as racist if not more so than Europeans on that front.

"All the way up to Britain creating the modern state of Israel out of nothing in the British Mandate for Palestine.."

Again you should learn some history. Before the British this area was part of the Ottoman Empire so there was no Palestine and there were Jews already living there just as there were Arabs. The "mandate" as you so eloquently put it called for a 2 state solution which the Arabs rejected much as they do today. The immigration of Jews into this area was further amplified by their ouster from other Muslim majority countries, nearly 900K Jews were expelled in mid 20th century as extremist governments took over. This action alone demonstrates the need for a Jewish state much as the debacle down in LA over the weekend where pro Hamas activists went into a predominantly Jewish neighborhood with the intent of disrupting a religious service and attacking Jewish people worshipping there. If Jews can't be safe in the US where can they be safe?

The only people oppressing Muslims are their fellow Muslims who use religion to suppress dissent and hoard power for themselves much the way Christians did during the Dark Ages. Ignorant people like you and your fellow activists find common cause with the pro Hamas crowd because its anti western and anti capitalism as I'm sure you are as well. The irony is as you protest against Trump establishing a religious-facist state you continue to support the group that if given the opportunity would install an actual religious-facist state.

@27: Hamas uses human shields because citizens in other countries fall for it, and blame Israel for the deaths etc. which Hamas' tactics cause:

"The strategic logic of human shields has two components. It is based on an awareness of Israel’s desire to minimise collateral damage, and of Western public opinion’s sensitivity towards civilian casualties. If the IDF uses lethal force and causes an increase in civilian casualties, Hamas can utilise that as a lawfare tool: it can accuse Israel of committing war crimes, which could result in the imposition of a wide array of sanctions."

(https://stratcomcoe.org/cuploads/pfiles/hamas_human_shields.pdf)

If, instead of condemning Israel, throngs of protesters in the world's cities vilified Hamas, and Hamas' supporters in those cities, Hamas' financiers in Qatar and Iran, and anyone else found helping Hamas obtain money, weapons, or men, Hamas may well have stopped or reduced using human shields by now. At the very least, they might not be so confident it's working.

If Progressives do indeed get "singled out" for their hypocrisy on Gaza, it's because their hypocrisy does exactly what Hamas' terrorists want. Which, in turn, encourages Hamas' to do more of it. The folks here blaming Israel, and only Israel, for every civilian casualty in Gaza, are actually making future civilian casualties in Gaza more likely.

Folks, it's not that 'the libs' love Islam, it's that the right needs simplicity.
If they are told they should be against something, they assume those they need to denigrate are for it.
Explains tensora at least.
Great article in the Guardian about the Israeli social media propaganda offensive against, among others, US universities, US democracy, BDS...

@36, yes, I get that you are a white nationalist. When Africans were selling other Africans as slaves they had assumed that slavery was the same in both cultures. So they assumed that those they sold would have a reasonable chance of earning their freedom, and that their children would be born free. They could not comprehend American chattel slavery.

But yes. we get you expect the rest of us to worship the Second Amendment as something better than the White Nationalist Constitution that saw Black folks as property.

@30 Swiftress: +1 For the WIN!! It's nice to be in agreement, and thank you for beating me to it.

@33: Why not, raindrop dear? Swiftress nailed it. 'Nuff said.

@26: “… Britain creating the modern state of Israel out of nothing in the British Mandate for Palestine.”

Wrong. Britain was (and, for that matter, is) not the United Nations:

“The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was a proposal by the United Nations, which recommended a partition of Mandatory Palestine at the end of the British Mandate. On 29 November 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted the Plan as Resolution 181 (II).[1] The resolution recommended the creation of independent Arab and Jewish States linked economically[2] and a Special International Regime for the city of Jerusalem and its surroundings.”

(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine)

As @36 also described, you can’t even get your basic facts right, and yet somehow you remain completely
confident your opinions should receive respect.

@36 Are you suggesting that since Arabs invaded Europe and participated in the slave trade centuries ago, it was reasonable for Europeans to colonize them in turn? if not, why are you even mentioning it since the current state of affair is very much the legacy of western colonization and imperialism? It must be a manifestation of how "civilized" you are compared to middle age invaders.

Jews being oppressed somewhere in the world is a very bad justification for stealing Palestinian land and ethnically cleansing Palestinians off that land. Why do you think that committing a crime against Palestinians is going to resolve the criminal persecution of Jews? As it were, Palestinian Arabs lived in peace with a small minority of Palestinian Jews before the onset of Zionist immigration. British and other Western colonial powers giving over 50% of the land to Israel including the best arable land was indeed never accepted by Palestinian Arabs. Palestine was a Roman province so it's hardly a modern invention.

@37 Dropping 2000 lbs bombs on entire neighborhoods to kill a couple of militants is indiscriminate and disproportionate = war crimes according to addendum to Geneva convention. Starving entire populations, destroying all infrastructure including hospitals, and denying humanitarian help are war crimes and likely amount to genocide. Hamas committing war crimes and violating the Geneva Convention is no excuse for Israel committing war crimes and violating the Geneva convention.

Israel's policies of violent annexation of Palestinian land are unlawful and a constant violation of international law as it has refused for decades to comply with UN orders to stop its illegal occupation. Israel is a rogue state that is guilty of ethnic cleansing while Hamas is committed to terror against civilians as it resists Israeli occupation. Claiming that the entire horrific situation is due to Hamas hiding among civilians (like all insurgents in asymmetric conflicts) amounts to giving a blank check to Israel as it pursues its policies of violent land grabs

@41 The humanism of Greenwood Bob deserves a lot of respect. Your full endorsement of Genocide, not so much.

@44: I’m sorry the abject ignorance of basic Middle Eastern history displayed constantly here by commenters who agree with you continues to cause you discomfort, but feature, not bug.

@20
I’ll agree with you about unions sheltering bad workers.
When I took over one of the warehouses it was unsafe and unorganized. I cleaned it up and improved order picking time by more than 30%. The guy who had let it become such a mess is still employed there. He later filed a grievance against me for cleaning the office. I was disappointed that I had found other employment as I was looking forward to finally meeting the union reps after 18 months.
Good to hear they actually accomplished something in getting folks a raise.

"The humanism of Greenwood Bob
deserves a lot of respect. Your
full endorsement of
Genocide, not
so much."

thank you
averagebob
for your* counter-
narrative to Genocidal
Arrogance it's most Welcome.

*& Greenwood Bob's
CDizzle/Garbby's
and boatgeek's
auntie Gee's
angryone's
CKathes'
barth's
xina's
too.

the conscience of tS
should not be
Psychopathic
Sociopathic
and Thanks
to ALL who
Make it
(not)
So

Including
tS's Writers.

well
This oughtta
(Finally!) Do IT:

nyt:

Israel’s
Supreme Court
Rules the Military
Must Draft Ultra-Orthodox Jews

The court ruled there was no basis
to exempt the ultra-Orthodox
from service, a decision that
threatened to split Prime
Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s
government
amid the
war in
Gaza.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/25/world/middleeast/israel-military-ultra-orthodox-jews-supreme-court.html

adios
bibi.

@43: “… Hamas hiding among civilians (like all insurgents in asymmetric conflicts)…”

Hamas is not an insurgency native to Gaza. It is a terrorist gang, partially funded by, and headquartered in, Qatar. Qatar is over a thousand miles away from Gaza.

This is why Hamas shows absolutely no concern for the lives of Gazans, as shown by Hamas constantly and callously using them for human shields against the IDF.

“Hamas committing war crimes and violating the Geneva Convention is no excuse for Israel committing war crimes and violating the Geneva convention.”

First, the Geneva Convention is very clear. Once Hamas hides behind civilians, it strips from those civilians all protections by the Conventions. It thus becomes perfectly legal for the IDF to shoot through those civilians to hit Hamas. Your denial of this, informed or otherwise, has no effect.

Second, if members of the IDF have indeed committed war crimes, those crimes should be investigated, and those persons tried, found guilty, and punished. But their crimes will not include shooting through any civilians Hamas used as shields. Blame for those civilian deaths lies entirely with Hamas.

one comment
on the article
@48, above:

Think about it. In the 21st century religious fundamentalism whether Jewish, Christian or Islamic has morphed into beliefs whose goal is a world rooted in dark age hatred and superstition.

Each of these so-called devout groups in their own way detests the other and anyone different from themselves. Each has the goal of obliteration of the others.

Sound like you want to base your foreign policy or any policy on the beliefs of any of these groups? Yet here in America that is the Republican goal. Vote.

Paul; Lynden WA

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/25/world/middleeast/israel-military-ultra-orthodox-jews-supreme-court.html#commentsContainer

bingo.

@49 - "It thus
becomes perfectly
legal for the IDF to shoot
through those civilians to hit Hamas."

--@Wormtongue

yep.
and if That
ain't "Perfection"
then Nothing can be.

speaking of which
what would local
Resident* Jesus
fucking do?

*currently
Former

@45 as if your constant cherry picking and twisting of marginal facts while ignoring the gist of arguments was proof of anything but your lack of intellectual integrity. The British mandate allowed massive immigration of Zionists to increase their numbers from an initial 8% to ~ 33% of the population by 1947, and their running of militia to set the stage for partition by the UN. Denying the large role played by the British in the partition of Palestine is the real ignorance here.

@39 are you seriously implying that selling people into slavery in the Arab world was ok? I don't even know how you can twist your brain to come up with that reasoning. I always think I've read everything on these pages, especially when it comes to this conflict and yet you and the other pro Hamas posters manage to come up with even more outlandish claims. It's breathtaking to behold.

@42 nothing of the sort, merely pointing out that Arab history comes with its own baggage and continuing blaming their problems on white supremacy is lazy and incorrect.

"As it were, Palestinian Arabs lived in peace with a small minority of Palestinian Jews before the onset of Zionist immigration"

This is not correct either. Please read history. The reason a Jewish state was created was because their "peaceful" Arab neighbors kept trying to kill them all.

@52: The partition of Palestine into an Arab State and a Jewish State was a proposal from the United Nations, not the British Empire. Therefore the armed Arab revolt against it was an armed rejection of the United Nations, not local resistance to the British Empire.

I get it’s embarrassing to have allies who spout such ignorance, but that’s your problem, not mine.

@49 "Hamas is not an insurgency native to Gaza"

Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian election and is composed of Palestinians but it's not native to Gaza? wtf are you on?

"Once Hamas hides behind civilians, it strips from those civilians all protections by the Conventions."

False. The 1977 addendum to the Geneva convention says that indiscriminate and disproportionate responses resulting in the loss of civilians, like obliterating neighborhoods or refugee camps, are war crimes. As I said a couple days ago we have gone over these facts and your denial of war crimes committed by Israel several times. You wanted me to dig through your garbage to provide citations (as if) but I knew you would do it again since it's central part of your apology for war criminals. Your subsequently paying lip service to Israel being, may be, eventually, convicted of war crimes isn't fooling anyone. As I said, you have no intellectual integrity.

@54 According to the wiki link you provided the 1937 British Peel commission first recommended partition. Am I now supposed to make a huge deal out of your factual error, suggest that you are grossly incompetent, so embarrassingly misinformed that it invalidates everything you might say?

@56: And the Balfour Declaration came years before that. So what? None of that changes the actual history of the partition of Palestine, which was attempted by the United Nations, not the British Empire.

Based upon that commenter’s previous output, I had generously assumed the original mistake had been made out of pure, abject ignorance, but now I’m not so sure. Given how much vapid “settler-colonialist” talk gets thrown around by defenders of Hamas, wrongly attributing the partition plan to the British Empire, instead of the United Nations, may have been a dishonest attempt to discredit the partition plan, instead of an honest mistake.

@55: Ok, so any Palestinians who voted for Hamas in 2006 share complicity for the current humanitarian disaster there. I’m not sure how that helps your claim they’re just victims of Israel, but there you go. Congratulations?

@53 So, you are implying that the Arab world's "problems" are due to their "baggage" which include invading foreign lands during the Middle ages ....hmmmm. It still sounds like you are saying that their ancestors were oppressor so oppressing them is justified.

"This is not correct either. Please read history. The reason a Jewish state was created was because their "peaceful" Arab neighbors kept trying to kill them all."

What I have read is that Palestinians of all confessions mostly lived in peace with one another before the beginning of Zionist immigration in the late 1800's. I have also read about the same between Jewish and Arab communities in many Arab countries but I haven't read about a holocaust in Arabia, that was in Europe, aka Christian land.

@57 You said that the British didn't propose to partition Palestine @54, which is factually wrong, but now you claim that it doesn't matter because it doesn't change anything (wrong as well since conditions changed significantly during the mandate as pointed out earlier) yet when others appear to misspeak you make it a symbol of their incompetence and what not.

You "generously assumed" nothing. Instead you talked about your lack of respect, "abject ignorance", etc... You are quite a piece of work.

So civilians voting makes them accomplices and fair game for retaliation including mass murder since they keep dying thanks to the IDF yet they are "not victims of Israel"? Wow you are clearly outing yourself here. The Israeli far right says the same thing. Does it includes kids who don't vote? what about the 55% who didn't vote for Hamas (Hamas got 45% of the vote). Are they also "not victims of Israel"?

@59: All the way back @26, Greenwood Bob made this blatantly false statement: “…Britain creating the modern state of Israel out of nothing in the British Mandate for Palestine.”

The United Nations proposed an Arab State and a Jewish State. The Arab revolt (some Palestinian Arabs, allied with Arab countries) was therefore against the United Nations, not the British Empire. It was not a righteous uprising of downtrodden indigenous peoples against imperial overlords, but an armed land-grab which failed, in violation of the UN’s peaceful plan for sharing the land. That’s the error I corrected. Your unhappiness about this is your problem, not mine.

Any “indiscriminate and disproportionate responses resulting in the loss of civilians,” will be decided in court. Any Israeli defendants, in addition to enjoying the presumption of innocence, can use in their defense Hamas’ longstanding policy of violating the Fourth Geneva Conventions. (You really need to drop your implicit idea that you are, or ever will be, judge, jury, and executioner on this matter.)

“So civilians voting makes them accomplices…”

Pick a lane and stay there. I happen not to believe a single vote, from almost twenty years ago, has much relevance today. You cited it as evidence of Hamas being native to Gaza, and having popular legitimacy there. As with the original refusal to abide by the UN partition plan, choosing war means accepting the consequences of losing. If the vote in 2006 means Hamas is legitimately Gazan — your position, not mine — then the population there must accept the current outcome. I prefer to think of them as innocent bystanders, but if you insist upon thinking of them as guilty accomplices, I cannot stop you. I just don’t see how it validates your claim they are victims of Israel.

Don't worry tensor, as long as you get the last post that's all that matters.

@60 "but if you insist upon thinking of them as guilty accomplices, I cannot stop you"

Fucking liar. YOU said they shared complicity (@57) then you excise part of my sentence to claim that it's what I was advocating.

@53 No, what I was saying was that the form of slavery practiced in the American South was a particularly vile and nasty form of slavery that was far worse than the version practiced at the same time in Africa. It's like saying that George Bush was not as bad for America as Donald Trump by several orders of magnitude. George Bush was a horrible President both for us here at home, and the world as a whole. Still, he wasn't Putin's lap-dog and he never tried to hold on to power with the first failed coup by a sitting president.

Thanks again for proving that you are a narrow-minded bigot!

@62, JFC, please learn to read what you write. You wrote @55:

“Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian election and is composed of Palestinians but it's not native to Gaza? wtf are you on?”

Well, if they won the most recent elections, then they’re the legitimate governing entity, are they not? And, in a democracy, the electorate shares responsibility for what their freely elected leaders do, correct?

As I clearly wrote @60, in as many words, this is “your position, not mine”. I do not believe an election held almost twenty years ago has any relevance today. From what I’ve seen, Hamas is a foreign-funded terrorist gang, led by persons resident in Qatar, which uses Gaza as a base to attack Israeli civilians. Their long-standing and on-going use of Gaza’s civilians as human shields shows they care nothing about Gaza’s residents.