Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders said Sunday he doesn’t know that a ceasefire is possible in the Israel-Hamas war with “an organization like Hamas” involved.

“I don’t know how you can have a ceasefire, (a) permanent ceasefire, with an organization like Hamas, which is dedicated to turmoil and chaos and destroying the state of Israel,” Sanders told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” Sunday.

    • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Also with regard to Russians. I work retail, and lately have more and more Russians come in, speaking broken English, very polite, always respectful.

      It both warms and breaks my heart to see them. It’s so sad that they’ve left their homeland, but it’s inspiring that they decided they’d rather move across the planet than be puppets to a warlord so deranged as to conscript soldiers.

      They always seem a little sheepish. Always like “sorry, sorry” for asking me questions, for taking up my time. I just want to tell them “I’m so glad you’re here! You’re a blessing to me! Stop apologizing please!” but unless they come out and tell me their situation it’s not my place to comment on it.

      We’ve got this dim view of “draft dodgers”, but the reality is it takes courage to say no to one’s own government, to put oneself in danger to avoid becoming an armed puppet of someone else’s ambition.

      • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        They generally are, but one Russian lady was walking around our downtown and spray painted z on some of our crosswalk push buttons. Some of the other Russians I have met came over long ago to escape Russia or even the USSR and have nothing good to say about it.

        I feel waaaay more sorry for my Ukrainian friends and coworkers, particularly my friend’s wife whose family back in Luhansk and Melitopol were bombed and sent to filtration camps. Never heard back from two of her cousins, 16 year old boys.

    • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I keep thinking about “how much responsibility does a people have for its government?”

      I’d say that Israel has zero moral claim to blame Gazans for Hamas, for one specific reason: the blockade on weapons into Gaza.

      I think that if Gazans’ natural right to arm themselves were respected, it would be a different story. But there is literally no way for the Gazans to depose their ruling junta, because (a) that junta isn’t offering any elections and (b) the means to do it more directly are being denied to them.

      Like, I think that we in the USA bear more responsibility for our government than Gazans bear for Hamas, because we have regular elections and we have access to weapons. We have two layers of escape clause from our government; they don’t have any.

      I agree Hamas != Palestine. Hamas is just using the Palestinians as hostages. Like a “bodyguard” that you didn’t hire, can’t get to stop following you, and who regularly attacks people then hides behind you.

      • Enkrod@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        Natural Right to arn themselves

        … holy shit, this is peek shitamericanssay

        I agree on the Hamas != Palestine though, but I feel like the citizens of Gaza are not completely without blame in this.

        • zovits@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          This. In a modern society there’s no natural right (or even a need) to own firearms.

          And it’s hard to imagine that Hamas could smuggle weapons, build rockets in basements, set up launchers between apartment blocks, fire missiles and return to step one - if the people of Palestine actually opposed them. But since they are able to do all of this, at least a significant portion of the people must actively support them and basically everyone else needs to tolerate their presence and activities.

      • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Are you then advocating for supplying weapons to Gaza?

        Do you feel that would be a wise decision?

        Because most Israelis are pissed at their PM for allowing Qatari funding to Gaza and Hamas. I would love to see their reaction to weapons being supplied to them. It would probably look pretty similar to what they are doing now.