Jack Albrecht
2 min readJul 6, 2024

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"What Israel does? It defendes [sic] itself."

This is patently false. A country that is bombing, starving and besieging occupied territory is by definition "attacking." Defending - by definition - means you are inside your own territory.

Israel can claim (as does the US very often) that they are "preemptively destroying" a potential enemy. The legality of that is very questionable in the case of the US, and completely illegal in the case of Israel. In both cases it is not "defending." It is attacking.

"What Hamas does? It fights from civil structures, which is both a war crime AND makes them lose the protected status."

Hamas is a guerilla force inside occupied territory. It has the right and obligation under the UN charter to resist Israeli occupation by force. It was exactly the same for the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto before the UN existed. No one can claim the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto could not defend themselves against the Nazis, also fighting from inside civil structures. The exact same applies to Hamas inside Gaza.

Your statement that Hamas "lose [sic] the protected status" is legally incorrect.

This has nothing to do with antisemitism and everything to do with a State Actor, Israel, ethnically cleansing Palestine and (IMO) in Gaza committing genocide.

I blame Hamas for killing and kidnapping civilians on 7 October. Those ARE war crimes, but those are the ONLY war crimes that Hamas has clearly committed. Hamas breaking out of Gaza and killing Israeli military and police is NOT a war crime.

Israel entering Gaza to kill Hamas IS a war crime. Let alone the siege and the 50,000+ civilians that Israel has killed, the hospitals, schools, universities, UN buildings bombed, cemeteries desecrated, civilians murdered, UN staff murdered, aide workers murdered, journalists murdered, even their own hostages with a white flag murdered. Those are ALL war crimes 1000x more than what Hamas committed on 7 October, and doesn't even start to reckon for the war crimes committed by Israel from 1948 until 6 October 2023.

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Jack Albrecht
Jack Albrecht

Written by Jack Albrecht

US expatriate living in the EU; seeing the world from both sides of the Atlantic.

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