The false equivalency of “extremists on both sides” in the Israel-Hamas war

I had a discussion with James on Mastodon about how both Israel and Gaza have governments that are both “unacceptably” bad. This is similar to an argument that both Israel and Gaza have extremists in government as a way to establish a sort of false equivalency. Here is my attempt to address that false equivalency.

@paul @evan understandable. Remember that the Palestinians don’t want to be under constant threat either, and many don’t support hamas, especially those in the West Bank (where attacks from settlers and Israeli security forces have been concentrated). The Palestinians I know in Ramallah really just want to live their lives in peace, like you do, like almost anyone would.

I don’t think peace is possible until both Israelis and Gazans recognize that their respective governments are unacceptably bad, and until both hamas and Netanyahu are out of power. You probably know that Netanyahu has favored hamas over Fatah because a two-state solution would be bad for him politically.

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To begin with, the Gazan Palestinians are under threat from two sources:

1. Hamas itself. Hamas is a tyrannical ruling power in Gaza and doesn’t tolerate any opposition to its rule.
2. Israeli strikes in response to Hamas attacking Israel.

If Hamas doesn’t attack Israel, the Palestinians have nothing to fear from the IDF.

The second issue is that while we have extremists in our government (thanks to Netanyahu who no-one else would work with), Hamas is an extremist, terrorist organisation that rules Gaza.

Hamas terrorises its own citizens, as well as Israelis. Hamas doesn’t hold elections and its primary focus is not the wellbeing of its people.

In Israel, we do have a far right government. Some members of that government are talking about taking over Gaza.

They are in the minority and they lack the support of the majority of Israelis. Unlike in Gaza, we have elections (sometimes too many) and I am sure we will see a return of a more centrist government after this war.

Our far right ministers are only good at sowing division and we don’t need that.