So you're saying that there are motivations that would make you perform suicide bombings?
There are incentives by which you would sacrifice your children?
The vast majority of Iranians and Palestinians are good people. Same as everyone. The leadership and nutcases are vastly different than normal people.
I have friends in Gaza and the west bank. They are victims of these nutcases, this sort of mentality is tolerance of intolerance. They are victims of Hamas as the Iranian people are victims of their leadership.
> but to consistently act surprised when people act “irrationally” is to suggest either your definition of rational is wrong or your understanding of the circumstances are wrong
It isn't that they're irrational. Their decisions don't match western rationality which is based on different standards.
If you think that the death of your child will send him on a fast track to heaven that can seriously impact the rational choices you make down the line. It doesn't mean you can't speak calmly or even pretend to have a different set of objectives.
Their definition of reality leads them to a very different set of incentives and decisions. I understand exactly why the leadership wants nuclear weapons. They're paranoid and they aren't wrong in their paranoia, but that goes both ways. If Israel had listened to voices like this in the past then Saddam Husein and Assad would have had nuclear weapons. Luckily they don't and now we don't have to know what the Iranian leadership would have done. That's a good thing for everyone, especially for the Iranian people in the long term.
Assuming you're from the states, imagine the Mexican president calling death to America constantly, claiming it's their religious prerogative to destroy America and launch multiple terrorist cells against America... Then imagine them developing nuclear weapons... The USA would be justifiably paranoid.
Not condoning suicide attack but early zionists in Israel are all the same attacking civilians by the same actions, and after more than hundreds years the autrocities still continue until today albeit in different inhuman forms [1].
Worst now they're using indiscriminate military bombings against Palestinian people mostly women and children that has no proper protection from state military [2]. From your logic and claims, zionist and Israel military don't match your so called western rationality and seems to be based on different standards.
Perhaps all these inhuman actions based on the fact that they wrongly believe that they're God's chosen people destined for the Heavens and will not be touched by the Hell fire for whatever autrocities they've committed? [3].
[1] The Hundred Years' War on Palestine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hundred_Years%27_War_on_Pa...
[2] Zionist political violence [1]:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionist_political_violence
[3] Chosen people:
I don't sleep great with all the constant rocket alarms because we're under fire and I have to take my kids to the safe room.
I'm not defending the Israeli government and very much didn't vote for them. I do explain specific policies that do make sense and the logic behind them.
> Not condoning suicide attack but early zionists in Israel are all the same attacking civilians by the same actions,
Nope. First off the use of the word "zionist" as a derogatory term is problematic. It just means "patriot" or the desire to live in Israel.
There were early attacks before the formation of Israel that can be broadly described as terrorist attacks. The difference in the severity and violence is staggering. E.g. the worst example is the hotel bombing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing
But here are some huge differences:
* They called in advance to warn about the bomb - this was ignored due to human error
* They were hunted down by moderate Israelis
> and after more than hundreds years the autrocities still continue until today albeit in different inhuman forms
Here's a different take. Palestinians spent the past 120 years constantly fighting the Jews. Losing and making things worse for themselves. Had they accepted the Jews right to exist by their side we could have all prospered. Israel gave them multiple chances to end this. It offered them a state twice. It even left Gaza and cleared the settlements. Instead the people voted in Hamas and proceeded to take the billions given to them in order to build rockets and a war machine against Israel.
I'm not saying that Israel is innocent here. But as a country Israel did pretty much anything one could expect under such a situation.
> Worst now they're using indiscriminate military bombings against Palestinian people mostly women and children
Again. Not true and relies on false numbers/narratives. Bombing is very discriminate and it's based on intelligence. It's coordinated with legal oversight. There are failures for sure, but Israel is doing more to avoid civilian deaths than any country in history.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/05/far-past-time-to...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/04/01/hamas-drop...
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/03/pa...
Hell, the IDF even calls people on the phone to make sure they evacuate: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67327079
> From your logic and claims, zionist and Israel military don't match your so called western rationality and seems to be based on different standards.
Nope. It's the fact that you believe a false narrative propagated by Hamas that is the problem. That gives them an incentive to keep sacrificing Palestinian civilians to erode support for Israel under the false hope that it will cause trigger the countries demise.
> Perhaps all these inhuman actions based on the fact that they wrongly believe that they're God's chosen people destined for the Heavens and will not be touched by the Hell fire for whatever autrocities they've committed?.
I suggest looking at the demographics of Israel. Israel has one of the highest ratios of secular/atheists. It is a deeply liberal state. Tel Aviv is more gay than San Francisco. My kids go to school with Muslim kids who are also Israeli citizens and 20% of the population.
Hell, if I watched the nonsense John Oliver says I'd probably also hate Israel. The fact is, it's a very different country from the narrative some people are driving. The supposed facts you chose are deeply cherry picked.
But the people you're supposedly defending would stone a gay person or a woman for the crime of being raped. Have been behind multiple terrorist attacks against civilians in busses, malls, coffee shops and embassies. Have killed Americans and held them hostage. These are bad people.
Worse, their goal isn't independence. Their goal is to kill 10M Israelis. From the river to the sea means kill all Israelis.
If you are direct descendants of the original Jews that have been living in the area for many centuries, I really hope that you and your family are safe from all the troubles.
But if you're of the new recent Jewish immigrants to the promised land of Israel, I've really bad news for you. Personally I'd migrate elsewhere than accidently caught in the perpetual crossfire [1],[2],[3].
> Israel has one of the highest ratios of secular/atheists
I'm not sure whether you're naive or pretending to be naive, but don't be fool to think that the Israel - Palestinian conflict is a nationalist or secular agenda, it's not and it's never was. It's highly religious matter and as you probably know the area surrounding Jerusalem is the holy land site for the three world's major religions namely Jewish, Christian and Islam, and the Jerusalem is mentioned specifically inside the Old Testament, New Testament and Quran, all originally in Semite based languages.
The root causes are religious and the solutions are also going to be religious based solutions, and those who think otherwise is either naive or in-denial, or both. There were already many many wars fought in the name of religions in Jerusalem, from David vs Goliath to subsequent Jewish wars with Persian and Roman, several hundreds years of Roman/Byzantine - Persian wars, several hundreds years of Crusades - Muslim wars, and now the Israel - Palestinian hundred years wars [1],[2],[3].
Fun facts, in the Quran Jewish people were mostly referred as Bani Israel (son of Israel or Yaakob/Jacob) not Yahudi as normally referred in the Arabic language, and both Cristians and Jewish together were referred as the People of the Books. The term 'Israel' is being used in the Quran more than thousands years ago, ironically it's being adopted by current Israel govt.
Another fun facts, most of the US Presidents (45) are descendants of the Eleanor of Aquitaine [4]. She's the Queen of France and later after her divorce, Queen of England. She's the mother of King Richard the Lionheart, the infamous Crusades King l, and also mother of King John Plantagenet. She's also the major sponsor and player of early Crusades [5].
[1] Jewish – Roman wars:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish%E2%80%93Roman_wars
[2] Roman - Persian Wars:
https://www.heritage-history.com/index.php?c=resources&s=war...
[3] Crusades:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades
[4] US Presidential Relationships to King John Plantagenet:
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:US_Presidential_Relation...
[5] Eleanor of Aquitaine:
> So you're saying that there are motivations that would make you perform suicide bombings? There are incentives by which you would sacrifice your children? <...> If you think that the death of your child will send him on a fast track to heaven that can seriously impact the rational choices you make down the line.
If your people were under threat, would you sacrifice yourself to save them? If your children died fighting to protect your country (genuinely protect, not in the "US invades Iraq to protect our god-given right to drive giant trucks" sense), would you be proud of them? Do you think they'd go to heaven?
This is why I keep pressing on this: under what circumstances would you do the same things that they're doing? Start from the premise that you did, and work backwards - what would it take? Why would you do that? If you continue to act like these people are weird alterna-humans, you're going to keep getting surprised by their actions. Start from the premise that they're like you or broadly like the people you know, work your way back to why the hell they're doing the things that keep surprising you, and then figure out what's going to make them stop.
(As a separate note, the concept of martyrdom doesn't start in Islam - there's a rich history of it across all the Abrahamic religions, and all of them presume the martyr's getting the fast track to paradise.)
I'd say one other thing, which is that Hamas is a militant group which considers themselves under existential siege and behaves accordingly - Iran is a different entity under different constraints whose people (and leaders) make different choices. Words are words - I'd suspect we've both heard plenty of revolting things from our countrymen that we brush off as idle talk that the other side would take as a dire threat.
And, for what it's worth, I understand the paranoia. I don't think it's unjustified. I get why Israel does not want Iran to get a nuclear bomb. But I don't think the actions of Israel or the US here are making that outcome less likely, and I think they're taking those actions due to the kind of misreading of Iran that we're discussing here.
To flip this on its head: if you were Iran, what on earth would convince you not to build a bomb now?
Thanks and appreciated.
> my genuine hope is that people everywhere can live in peace and safety.
Same. Unfortunately, bad people do exist and pacifism is a luxury we can't afford.
> unless you've got Bibi's private number, in which case - get dialing, damn
We demonstrate a lot. Some in-front of his house. He's an a*hole megalomaniac that just doesn't care about anything. But I guess you have your own version of that...
> If your people were under threat, would you sacrifice yourself to save them?
Self sacrifice is very different to walking into a bus in the middle of Tel Aviv where you have children and other Muslims and blowing yourself up. Notice that people did it during the Oslo accord period, not for the purpose of "protecting their family". They did it to stop the peace process from happening and were successful.
The goal of Hamas is the exact opposite of what you describe. Their goal is to prevent peace with Israel. Oct 7th happened because they were afraid Israel would make a deal with Saudi Arabia which would lead to a Palestinian state. They don't want that, they want the whole country.
I'll also say that if I say things like "Israel does X" or something, I'm not ascribing the actions or morals of the state to you personally - I live in America, I know the difference between the actions of a government and the opinions of its people (unless you've got Bibi's private number, in which case - get dialing, damn).
> Do you think they'd go to heaven?
They believe that if a Palestinian child dies during the conflict they go to heaven. That essentially gives them a license to "sacrifice" children of other Palestinians as part of their holy war.
> This is why I keep pressing on this: under what circumstances would you do the same things that they're doing?
No. I'd compromise and build a country. That is what the majority of Palestinians want. That is why the Palestinian authority never joined Hamas's war against Israel.
> (As a separate note, the concept of martyrdom doesn't start in Islam - there's a rich history of it across all the Abrahamic religions, and all of them presume the martyr's getting the fast track to paradise.)
Sure. It's in the old testament I know. תמות נפשי עם פלישתים Roughly translated: "My sole will die with the philistines" which is fitting. But we grew up as did the Christians who were also pretty crazy. The same is true for most Muslims, as I said... My kids study in school with Muslims. They are fine people. Hamas is a different breed.
> I'd say one other thing, which is that Hamas is a militant group which considers themselves under existential siege and behaves accordingly
That isn't true. They had the freedom to do whatever they wanted and made an explicit choice. Israel literally paid them billions in a failed attempt to make them more moderate.
They continue to make that choice by refusing the release of the 53 Israeli hostages which would end the war.
Indeed we do :-)
> That is why the Palestinian authority never joined Hamas's war against Israel.
The PA's reward for this is the settlers.
I think a basic problem for Israel here is that some relatively small percent of the population wants genocide, and they're the ones who've been driving the cart for the last decade or so.
What, to you, is the realistic road to a two-state solution?
With regards to the hostages - to an outside eye, Israel's bombing campaign doesn't really seem to indicate they're overly worried about the health and safety of those 53 remaining hostages.
