"On the Record with Hamas": Jeremy Scahill Speaks with Hamas About Oct. 7, Ceasefire Talks & Israel

[Uncle Joe]

With the war on Gaza now in its 10th month, we speak with journalist Jeremy Scahill about the state of negotiations for a possible ceasefire and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas. Scahill recently spoke to senior Hamas officials about the ongoing ceasefire negotiations and the group’s broader goals. He is a co-founder of The Intercept, and he recently announced he was leaving after more than a decade to launch a new investigative journalism outlet, Drop Site News, alongside colleague Ryan Grim. Scahill’s new article, “On the Record with Hamas,” examines the militant group’s motivations to launch the October 7 attacks in Israel, as well as its stance on the negotiations, based on interviews with a number of senior Hamas officials and other sources. “October 7 didn’t happen in a vacuum,” says Scahill. “The primary motivation, Hamas members told me, was to try to shatter the status quo on Gaza. They felt that the situation was becoming untenable.”

Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at democracynow.org Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET.

[JohnSJ]

1. Scahill is an hamas apologist, and propagandist who pushed the LIE that the rapes and killings weren't really as

bad as portrayed on October 7th

[AloeVera]

2. Israeli gov't does not want a ceasefire.

To wit, in the last week or so, the escalation of airstrikes across Gaza; the largest land-grab in 20 years in the West Bank; the forced evacuation and coming destruction of Gaza's last remaining hospitals and on and on. The brazenness of the bad faith would be astonishing and condemned in a normal world, but nothing about this campaign of mass extermination is normal.

I've been thinking that nothing is going to stop this except the Israeli people themselves. But protests are still mainly focused solely on the hostages, or against Netanyahu, not on the immorality of the slaughter. In fact polls indicate near-unanimous support for how the "war" is being waged. Until Israelis feel a gut-wrenching revulsion against what is being done, the suffering in Palestine won't end. I simply don't see this about-face happening anytime soon.

[xocetaceans]

3. To stop this war, Hamas should return all the hostages and present themselves to the Israeli Army in surrender. That...

...would go a long way to restoring peace in Gaza. Anything else is probably an unrealistic reading of the situation.

If Hamas were not hiding behind civilians and if those civilians did not (seemingly to a great extent) support Hamas, the war would likely be over with much less bloodshed (who seriously believes that Hamas's body count propaganda is accurate anyway?), but Hamas chose to fight a war that it could never win and further badly misread its opponent's determination.

Hamas is no better than Daesh and bears nearly the full responsibility for what is happening in Gaza.

It is unfortunate to see that Scahill seems now to be almost completely an apologist for Hamas and that he mentioned "accountability to his readers" as a primary motivation for his reporting instead of an accountability to the truth.

[AloeVera]

4. Well...

Conditioning the end of the slaughter to Hamas' surrender is merely prolonging it, and providing cover for it. Why ask for something that you know your opponent is not going to give, unless you are not interested in honest good faith negotiations or in ending the "war" anytime soon.

I'm not sure if you've noticed the condition of Gazan prisoners that have been released from Israeli prisons after months of torture and starvation and now walking skeletons, amputees or suffering mental illnesses - and none of them actually having been charged with anything - but it's not conducive to anyone wishing to surrender to be subject to that abuse and likely much, much worse.

Hell, even if they all surrender, Israel will claim that there are more in hiding and continue the bombing and starvation.

There is no upside to surrendering for Hamas. Anyone hanging their hat on that is being disingenuous or naive at best, and callous towards the suffering at worst.

So very tired of the "hiding behind civilians" fake narrative. It's a diabolical, nasty piece of propaganda that subverts humanitarian law into something totally unrecognizable in order to try to rationalize the high rate of civilian deaths. Just look at the Where's Daddy AI program, that waits until the targets are home with their families and neighbours to carry-out the bombing. Choosing to kill them at home rather than while they are engaged in military activity and then claiming those people were "human shields". There are no human shields in Gaza, only humans that are being slaughtered and conveniently given this label post-slaughter.

If there actually were human shields - and there are not - Israel would have a responsibility to keep them from harm, not use that status as a greenlight to kill them - which is another reason none of it ever made sense to me. The targeting of civilians is just one of many of its war crimes, as outlined in the independent panel of UN Commissioners' report which stats confirms everything many of us have been saying.

I agree that Hamas badly misread Israel's response, but really most people could not have predicted this level of savagery and war criminality. Israel is certainly determined but not in the way you imply. It's determined to inflict collective punishment, exact maximum revenge and make Gaza unlivable in order to have most of the people "evacuated" or "voluntarily emigrated", aka ethnically cleansed.

Who seriously believes the body count? Not me and not many others. It is a serious undercount, the true numbers once known - if ever - will be staggering. Truth and accountability, I sure hope so.

[xocetaceans]

5. It is an interesting position that you have taken...

What leads you to believe that Hamas in Gaza will be allowed to survive this war? Do you really think that Israel has any intention of stopping short of eliminating the military capabilities of Hamas and as much of Hamas and its allies as possible? What is the rationale that would lead you to believe that Hamas's destruction is not a goal that will be pursued to its completion? As long as there is a military threat in Gaza, it seems completely clear that Israel will continue. October 7 was not just a cruise around the countryside, and no government that has the capability to eliminate the possibility that such an event could be repeated would allow the perpetrators of such an attack to remain unscathed.

You seem truly naive to analyze things the way that you seem to have done, and it does not seem that you fathom the depth of situation.

[AloeVera]

6. Your take is interesting too...

I thought it superfluous to state that Israel will continue until their oft-stated goal of "destroying Hamas" is achieved. I have no doubt about that. I was simply responding to your assertion that "if only" Hamas surrendered, all would be lollipops and sunshine or "peace" as you call it.

But now that you raise it, let me say that I think the "destroy Hamas" narrative, while I have no doubt that it's truthful, is not the entire truth either. As long as Hamas is "undestroyed", Israel has the perfect pretext for continuing the destruction of Gaza and its people. We might find out that Hamas is in fact indestructible - it is more an idea and ideology and a semi-clandestine paramilitary force than an actual army after all - and its elimination might take years of war and occupation and even then it will spring back up in one form or another.

But curiously, you have now gone from calling for Hamas' surrender as the solution to ending the "war", to admitting the obvious: Israel will not end its campaign of destruction of Gaza and its people, no matter what, until Hamas is "destroyed" whatever the hell that actually means as you really can't destroy the Palestinians' yearning for freedom from the Israeli yoke. The sad reality that should be clear to everyone unless they are either extremely naive or purposely obtuse is that the goal of the destruction of Hamas really means the destruction of the Palestinians.

[Beastly Boy]

7. And here we go, equating an oppressive Islamist terrorist regime to the Palestinian people.

Last edited Wed Jul 10, 2024, 10:55 AM - Edit history (2)

Does your persistent apologia, cloaked in an all too transparent veil of moral outrage, for the vile cannibalism of "martyring" tens of thousands of unsuspecting Palestinians, openly admitted to and celebrated by Hamas as a major victory, know no limits?

When did the well-armed, organized and trained horde of serial murderers and rapists financed and sheltered by foreign governments become "more an idea and ideology and a semi-clandestine paramilitary force than an actual army"?

When did the genocidal Hamas charter become "Palestinians' yearning for freedom from the Israeli yoke"?

When did the Iran-sponsored army (yes, a actual army!) that brutally enforced the expulsion of their Palestinian governing coalition partners from Gaza in 2007, dividing Palestinian territories into two belligerent camps and ending any hope for democratic and united Palestinian government, become representative of "the Palestinians' yearning for freedom from the Israeli yoke"?

Not even an obligatory "I hate Hamas, but..." anymore.