Why are people acting like supporting Palestine is supporting Hamas?

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05/08/2024 23:12

Subject: Why are people acting like supporting Palestine is supporting Hamas?

Anonymous

Anonymous wrote:I agree with you, OP. I support the Israeli people but not their government's current actions. I support Palestinians but not Hamas. I think a lot of people feel this way. Both the Israelis and Palestinians are not being well served by their leaders. I don't want any more innocent people to be hurt on both sides of this issue. Why is that such a radical thing to say?

Exactly--I blame particular elements within Israel's politics and culture for the slaughter, no Israeli Jews as a population. Same with Gaza. Same regarding Americans when Trump snagged the 2016 election.
But it is also important to realize that election wins are the results of many factors, current and past, and whether people think those pursuing power are fundamentally on their side, not even necessarily what they will specifically do. Voters in powerful countries like the US don't really have to worry and fear what other countries are going to do to them, so maybe it's hard for us to appreciate what people like those in Gaza might have been thinking when they voted for Hamas to represent their interests.

Found an article written at the time when the 2006 results were apparent but not finalized:
PRAGUE, 26 January 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Elias Kukali, one of the directors of the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion, located in Beit Sahour on the West Bank, said that, in part, Hamas rode to victory on a wave of anti-Western sentiment in the Palestinian territories.

"All the time, Israel and the United States and Europe said that we do not need Hamas to win," Kukali said. "So that means telling the Palestinian people to vote for Hamas, because people here are not happy with the Europeans or the Americans and they think [those countries] are helping Israel. So if the United States or Israel says ‘we don’t need Hamas’ then the people will vote for Hamas."

He also said that the continued Israeli occupation of the West Bank contributed to Al-Fatah’s defeat, as did perceived corruption in the Palestinian Authority, which has been dominated by Al-Fatah. "Collective punishment for the Palestinians does not help the Palestinian Authority to build the Palestinian state," Kukali said. "Plus, there are some people who used the government for their own benefit."

And more recently--but before the October 7 attacks:
Arab Barometer is a nonpartisan research group established in 2006 to help the world better understand the views and issues shaping the Middle East and North Africa. Its most recent survey of the West Bank and Gaza utilized one-on-conversations with 790 individuals in the West Bank, and 399 in Gaza, between September 28 and October 8, 2023—with the work in Gaza obviously interrupted by Hamas’s terrorist attack.

Even though Hamas won a plurality of votes in 2006 legislative elections in both Gaza and the West Bank, the Arab Barometer’s findings make it clear that the terrorist group had fallen well out of favor before the October 7 attacks.

When asked how much they trusted Hamas authorities, 44% of Gazans said they had no trust at all, and 23% had “not a lot of trust.” Only 29% expressed either a great deal or quite a lot of trust in their government. When it came to government corruption, 72% said they believed there was a large or medium amount of corruption in government institutions, and only a minority thought the government was taking meaningful steps to address the problem.

Those same attitudes were reflected in the Gazans’ views of key political candidates. In a hypothetical ballot featuring Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, Mahmoud Abbas, the current president of the Palestinian Authority, and Marwan Barghouti, an imprisoned member of the central committee of Fatah, none got more than 32% of the imagined vote, and 30% said they would sit the election out.

According to other reports of polls conducted within Palestine, it seems that in September 2023 Hamas' support was extremely low. But AFTER the attacks, and Israel's response, what happens?--more support for Hamas, varies, they mostly want it over, but there is a sense that Israel's response has become a retroactive justification for the attacks.

Regardless, Palestinians have not been in much of a position to have a robust democracy since the creation of Israel as a state, while we in the US, with all our advantages and so much less at stake for most people, are increasingly doing a crap job with our own.