The history of that region taught the Chinese government that if they don't do something about it, then extreme religious groups may cause serious damage.

You mean like when the Qing used the uighurs to exterminate the dhungzar mongols in the first place?

It's difficult to take that seriously, given the government itself opened fire on its own population and killed 10000 people in 1989.

Please don't use HN for ideological battle or religious flamewar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Gaza is not a religion problem, it is a human right problem. Israel is scandalously denying human people living in Gaza any dignity in their living, after stealing their land and oppressing them for years.

I'm sick to see how much America is getting complicit with this. and happy to see that most of Europe realizes what is really going on there.

Do you know many people in Gaza? Because I do and they complain much more about Hamas than they do about Israel. I'm far from agreeing with Israel's policies regarding Gaza, but the truth is it's far from being Gaza's biggest problem. Not to mention the often forgetten fact that Gaza has another border, with Egypt, which is closed, and Israel has nothing to do with it.

A Gazan friend told me this very week actually that they wish Israel would re-enter the Gaza strip and remove Hamas from power. Israel of course is not interested.

Reality is often much more complicated.

> Not to mention the often forgetten fact that Gaza has another border, with Egypt, which is closed, and Israel has nothing to do with it.

Suppose a universe in which Israel didn't exist. Would Egypt have closed off its border with Gaza? Not a chance. That means it has everything to do with Israel. If you think Israel and its allies wouldn't respond with pressure on Egypt the moment it'd open up a border with Gaza, precisely because of Israel, you're fooling yourself.

As for your anecdotal stories about a friend in Gaza, they're as meaningless as if I said I had a Gazan friend who said the opposite.

The notion you've got Gazans risking their lives protesting against Israel (with over ten thousand injuries and 100 dead in the past months, 100% Palestinian) but not Hamas apparently isn't telling to you.

And if you think Palestinian lack of satisfaction with its leaders at any point in its history (e.g. Hamas now) has nothing to do with Israeli oppression (including the closed borders and the destruction of Palestinian economy every time there's an lopsided violent clash) with the backing of the world's superpower, you're also fooling yourself.

* The Egyptian border is closed since the Egyptian army took control of the country. They hate Hamas more than anything. They have no love for Israel. Israel never asked them to close the border. What is your "not a chance" based on? Egypt blamed Hamas for terror attacks inside Egypt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_positions_on_the...)

* My stories are anecdotal, but my work for the past year has almost 100% to do with Gaza and it's internals conflict. I wish I could say more but I can't, and by the way, I can't because it would put my Gazan friends in risk of being hurt by Hamas. I'm sure it doesn't represent the majority, but you have to remember what's possible to say and what's impossible to say in Gaza. It was about two years ago when thousands of youth in Gaza wanted to organize a protest against Hamas. They FB event went crazy. Hamas broadcasted a very simple slide on all TV channels saying that everyone who'll be out on the street in the time of the protest will be immediately shot. The whole thing was canceled. So yeah, the voices against Hamas are much harder to be heard, but they are there and I believe that it's not only my stories who show them, but everyone who'll you have an honest (and unfortunately, fully encrypted) conversation with will tell you the same.

* I never said Gazans like Israel. They hate it. They also hate America, the Palestinian Authorities, etc'. So what? My note was only that the Human Rights issues in Gaza have only so much to do with Israel.

* I agree that Israel helped bringing Hamas into power. That doesn't change the fact that Hamas are no less of oppressors towards their own people. They abuse them, they care nothing for their lives, they're a bunch of gangsters willing the destroy all of Gaza just so they'll stay in power. Yes, Israel has to do with it, and not a little. But Hamas was chosen democratically.

Again, I've led so many campaigns and protests against Israel's governments and policies over the past years. I'm so far from agreeing with them on anything. But I care for Gazans a lot, and since I started hearing them, I learned that their day-to-day problems are at 90% of the cases things like corruption, women rights, inability to gather, abuse, and internal Stasi-like issues.

The problem is you are considered Anti-Semitic if you criticize the government of Israel. So you cannot even talk about it in public, or it will ruin your reputation and career.

Edit: The karma of my comment proves my point.

In tech and in other liberal fields as academia it is the reverse: critique of islam, muslims, their treatment of women and education, is mostly forbidden unless you’re ok with being ostracized.

I also work in tech, I just don’t discuss anything remotely controversial IRL because it will end up offending someone. Recently, I made the mistake to actually speak what was really on my mind (when I was drunk) and I ended up getting physically assaulted which led to a concussion. Suffice it to say I will never talk about politics publicly ever again.

To be fair your username might be part of the issue. It makes it a bit hard to take claims of innocent-peace-and justice-no-anti-semetic-intent-intended and somewhat implies time spent watching "Evil Joos controlz the banking system and the Facebook!" videos.

Charitably, myself, I assume this isn't actually the case, but it could create that impression. FWIW.

I came up with this name when I was bored and surfing random articles on Wikipedia.

Gaza is a good example of how constant control and oppression makes people desperate and you get large scale issues. If you haven't noticed, that problem has not been solved.... that should tell you something.

I don't know what you'r trying say with that second line. Your perspective is very strange, it seems like madlibs for identity politics.

I wonder how "out of control" you would be if you fell victim to settler colonialism. We can objectively say it's colonialism rather than occupation since it's permanent.

What would you do if an IDF Caterpillar D9 armored bulldozer shows up in your neighborhood accompanied by the military and starts demolishing houses to make room for settlers, leaving a bunch of people homeless in the process?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDF_Caterpillar_D9

That's why people are a little bit upset over there. Among other things.

It really shouldn't be astonishing (although I disagree with your assessment of the situation in Gaza in particular -- Israel has been doing some seriously fucked up shit in the region for a long time). The most obvious long term response to Nixon's Southern Strategy is to do the opposite and wait for the GOP's embrace of being the conservative white party to screw them over. They've succeeded at that. Every demographic other than straight married white women and straight white men prefer the Democratic Party. Rhetoric painting that demographic as the enemy (often exaggerated IMO but based on at least partial truths most of the time) helps unify those groups despite their differences. Of course that's a big part of the polarization in our politics, but we're approaching a tipping point where the GOP's current position will become untenable and that might result in the polarization being dialed down as the GOP attempts to rebrand itself and expand it's constituency again.

The presence of the "nonviolent" but complacent and complicit minority in these countries is what enables things to be the way they are. Maybe not everyone participates, but if you poll them on whether or not they support honor killings, oppression of women, etc. a large number will agree. This is not some fringe set of beliefs. Now personally I don't think we need to "do something about it", but the U.S. has actually gone out of it's way to create chaos in the Middle East and empower fundamentalism. We treat Saudi Arabia as an ally while they export poisonous propaganda, we help remove mostly secular dictators from power (who are generally opposed to Islamism and who keep the peace between ethnic groups), and chaos, terrorism, and explicitly Islamist governments with far more extreme policies is the result. Basically, if we really wanted to "do something about it" we'd just stop doing what we've been doing for decades. And yes, that includes not overthrowing Assad. The same people claiming he gassed his people are the same ones that said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. I don't buy it.

About your first point, you are totally right. A report made in France tells that 28% of Muslim support an authoritarian position and a separatism against their host country society. While 1/3 is technically a minority, it is still a really hight proportion and a really signifiant number of people that can be counted in millions.

"28 % des musulmans de France peuvent être regroupés dans ce groupe qui mélange à la fois des attitudes autoritaires et d’autres que l’on pourrait qualifier de « sécessionnistes ». L’islam est un moyen pour eux de s’affirmer en marge de la société française." [28% of muslim living in France can be grouped in this group that mix both authoritarian and « separatist » attitudes. Islam is for them a way to affirm themselves at the edge of the French society.] Un Islam de France est Possible, Institut Montaigne / Hakim El Karoui, 2016.

That's truly shocking. I wonder if anything can be done at this point. The only hope is that these numbers go down rather than increase in the next years.

You support mass oppression and claim to be concerned about opression of women?

I doubt your sincerity about that and the rest of your arguments.

Are you ok with oppressing al quida, hamas, isis?

No, I don't think that going out of our way to "liberate" people who are just going to immediately vote for theocratic government is doing anything to reduce oppression. Democracy does not inherently reduce oppression, in this case it just enables oppression by a majority which is often even more aggressive than the system that preceded it.

As opposed to the western approach which lets religious fundamentalists profess their anti-semitism, anti-atheism and misoginy freely and violently?

Example: http://www.france24.com/en/20180511-saudi-financed-belgian-m...

And while freedom of expression is important, it is limited (especially in Germany). Racists expressions are a no-no pretty much everywhere.

Now Jews feel increasingly unsafe in the streets of Europe.

Freely, yes. People in the United States have the right to express publicly whatever their beliefs are. And we also have the right to judge people based on their beliefs.

I'm not sure about the rest of the "western" world. But I this the way it is in the United States.

Hitchens called himself an "antitheist" and certainly expressed that sentiment freely, I don't see why someone shouldn't express anti-atheism freely.

Violence is obviously already illegal, as is anti-semitism in many western countries.

Are you concerned those people might oppress others if they came to power...like say the article above?