I don’t think I’ve seen a single comment on Lemmy that equates Hamas with Palestine

Then you’re turning a blind eye or somehow missing it, this place is overrun with calls to violence against Israel and its people. This place is also overrun with support for Hamas. Look at how heavily downvoted my comments (and the parent comments merely stating that Hamas are in the wrong) are. I’m not supporting the Israeli government, I’m not going “woo, IDF, let’s go!”. I’m not even saying “Israel has every right to attack”.

I support Palestine in that I want Palestinian people to have their own internationally recognized state. I want them to be allowed to be self-sufficient, to not be blockaded, to not be encroached upon. I also think that Israeli people deserve to exist in their own state. Both states deserve to exist without constant threat of war, sanction, or terrorism. If we can’t agree to those basic statements – and I’ve seen comments here that will disagree with them, especially Israel’s legitimacy via the mandate of Palestine – then I don’t know what else to say.

shouldn’t the highly educated, wealthy, developed, democracy be held to a significantly higher standard?

Yes, absolutely. The only thing I’ve said (or implied, maybe I needed to spell it out) is that Hamas is a terrorist organization that has stolen from the very people it was supposed to protect. It has deprived them of life and liberty, it has prevented fair elections for nearly two decades purely to maintain its own grasp on power. There’s no need for whataboutism, Israel is also depriving them of the same I just accused Hamas of doing. That doesn’t make Hamas right. In an alternate timeline there would have been a Palestine run by elected officials who respect the election process, instead of a terrorist organization, and those officials would better represent the wants and needs of the people. And they would not have orchestrated a massacre on civilians and tourists.

A lot of people however, are rationally, and correctly, pointing out that organizations like Hamas are a symptom of an oppressed people. Like an apartheid state, or slave state, we can look at history for examples of people striking out over and over again.

You can see it that way, but you also have to take Hamas’s stated goal into consideration. Their stated goal is not to liberate their people, it’s to be the new oppressor, and a far worse one than that.

Let’s put it another way. There are around two million Arab Israelis. They’re in the Israeli parliament, they serve in its courts, in the military, etc. Would they be liberated if Hamas achieved its goal? They would probably be viewed as collaborators and executed.

This myth that Hamas are just freedom fighters, like Nelson Mandela or Gandhi, really needs to be dispelled. It has no basis in reality.

There’s this weird urge in the minds of people to try to find a hero story. There’s no hero story. And if groups like Hamas weren’t wreaking havoc in the area for the past 50+ years, realistically, a Palestinian state would probably exist.

I can’t speak for the next 10 to 20 years, but the long-term viable solution in 30 years is going to be a single country encompassing both current Israel and current Palestine, in a secular, non-ethnocentric, non-religious democratic organization. Where people are equal regardless of their ethnicity, religion, or language.

Except no one in the region wants that. Certainly not Hamas.