SXSW Tried to Silence Critics with Bogus Trademark and Copyright Claims

> dancing in celebration

Yes. It's called revenge and it's ugly. Do I need to remind you what happened in the US when the killing of Osama Bin Laden was announced? Or the Israeli tradition of bringing out lawn chairs to witness retaliatory bombings of Gaza even prior to Oct 7th? Or are those different because the violence and death they celebrated was carried out by soldiers not terrorists?

> Then they brought back hostages for more rape and torture. Even infants.

They took hostages, yes. Most likely because they thought Israel would do what most civilised countries would do and a) not risk killing the hostages by bombing them and b) negotiate as they had done in the past by offering the release of Palestinian prisoners.

For what we do know from the hostages that were released, they were generally treated relatively well and provided with medical assistance and the same level of food and shelter as their captors. Which makes sense if you intend to release them because if you can't keep them alive, you can't use them for bargaining.

> Even infants.

Is your displeasure with taking infants as hostages? We can debate the morals of taking infants with you when taking hostages versus leaving them to die of exposure but this is hardly a good occasion if there ever was one. Because if the suffering or risk of death to infants is what troubles you, I have bad news about the victims of the IDF bombings - and not just those following Oct 7.

> Hamas can end this right now by giving up it's hostages and surrendering.

Israel has bombed Gaza for months, sent ground troops, killed tens of thousands of people, at least half of which are children. The IDF has made no indication that it knows the location of the hostages and the bombings can at best be described as indiscriminate. Israel has cut off food, water and fuel into Gaza, Israeli protestors have prevented supply trucks from entering into Gaza and the IDF has shot and injured over a hundred unarmed Gazans trying to access a supply truck (aka The Flour Massacre). They even messed up by accidentally killing unarmed hostages with a white flag because they mistook them for Palestinians (or more charitably: Hamas terrorists pretending to be unarmed civilians to lure them into a trap or something).

Regardless of whether Hamas is as irredeemably evil as you think it is, what makes you think the hostages are still alive? Israel clearly has no interest in negotiating and Gazans are resorting to eating animal feed to avoid starvation. If they brought the hostages back for "rape and torture", they'd be long dead by now. If they kept them fed and cared for like the released hostages say, there's still a high likelihood the remaining hostages are dead by now.

Assuming the hostages were where the Hamas terrorists were hiding and the IDF targeted Hamas hideouts and bases rather than going for indiscriminate killings of Palestinians, what makes you think the hostages survived the IDF attacks?

You can either have an IDF that is indiscriminate killing civilians as collective punishment and accepting an extremely high collateral damage per strategic target and likely killed multiple hostages at this point as a consequence, or you can have an IDF that is deliberately accepting the death of hostages by bombing known Hamas bases (which just happen to be in every single building in Gaza City apparently) or you can have an IDF that knows exactly where the hostages are but despite having flattened Gaza city and sent in ground troops either can't or doesn't want to rescue them.

> Hamas can end this right now by giving up it's hostages and surrendering.

Now that we've established that they very likely quite literally can't, let's also look at what you are actually saying.

Hamas can end "this". I assume by "this" you mean the continuing bombings of Gaza by the IDF, the killings of Gazans by the IDF and the denial of food, water and fuel into Gaza by Israel? Note that "Hamas" is not the subject nor even an actor in any of those actions. Literally all of these are things done by Israel (or the IDF at the behest of Israel) to Gazans. There's no cause and effect here that involves Hamas.

Hamas can end this, says who? Netanyahu has already declared the goal of this war is not just to defeat Hamas but to prevent anything like October 7 from ever happening to Israelis again. That's a goal that is much broader than just Hamas. Arguably that goal can not be achieved as long as there are any Palestinians in Israel/Palestine that might hold a grudge against Israel or Israelis. And given that Israel just killed tens of thousands of their relatives and at least half of those were children, I'd say there's a high likelihood most Palestinians hold a grudge if they didn't before.

"Hamas" can end this. Okay, but even the IDF acknowledges at least some of the rocket attacks from within Gaza against Israel were carried out by the Muslim Brotherhood, not Hamas. Hamas has previously stated that it can not force the Muslim Brotherhood to adhere to any ceasefires it negotiates. So Hamas clearly is not the only force in the region. But if Hamas surrenders and the Muslim Brotherhood does not, what's to stop Hamas members from defecting to the Muslim Brotherhood? Clearly Hamas surrendering is not enough even if the goal only is a "war against terror" rather than the displacement of all Palestinians.

> Hamas can end this right now

"This" is framed as a military response to the attacks on Oct 7 the same way the US framed its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as military responses to the attacks on 9/11. But just like 9/11 and arguably even more so, those attacks didn't happen in a vaccuum. Hamas literally can't end this. To be fair, even the IDF can't end this because ending this requires more than just "stopping" - that's a ceasefire, not peace.

Either Gaza and the West Bank are "Palestine", a sovereign state of Palestinians, then Israel should be in favor of a two-state solution and let Palestinians control their own borders and stop blockading their waters lest it wants to engage in military actions. Or Gaza and the West Bank are parts of Israel in which case Palestinians are Israeli residents and in order to avoid a "second class citizen" situation (aka Apartheid), Israel would have to offer them citizenship as a "one-state solution". Or of course we can go on doing what has been happening ever since the start of the Zionist project in Palestine and do things that we have largely deemed unacceptable elsewhere since the end of the colonial age.

It's one thing to justify something as military necessity, but it's hard to see any in Hamas' actions. It certainly doesn't get them any closer to getting what they want. But it does cost them support that they would otherwise have. Furthermore, realistically, the best that Palestinians can hope for is some form of two-state solutions - "from the river to the sea" is not going to happen. But it's that much harder to argue for a Palestinian state if Hamas are the ones running it, given the kind of governance they have demonstrated internally, and the kind of brutality we've seen on Oct 7.