this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2023
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[–] Aceticon 132 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

Yeah, but because amongst all those people killed by the Israeli army in the very place they told them to shelter, there isn't a nice looking western girl with glamour pictures on social networks, the murder of those people will never cause the same disgust in the West as the plight of the girl kidnapped by Hamas which has been turned into a constantly repeated Israeli propaganda piece (you can tell it's now being pushed as propaganda because it's been repeated well beyond its newsworthiness and always with the same glamour picture).

The gapping chasm in numbers between those murdered by Israel and those by Hamas is inverted in terms of the disgust they cause in the West exactly because Israeli has a vastly superior propaganda machine.

Thinking people would start wondering why, reliably, 100s of murdered palestinians are portrayed with less emphasys than 1 kidnapped israeli-german teenager.

[–] [email protected] 66 points 1 year ago (7 children)

See, on the one hand you're validly calling out sensationalism and propaganda, but on the other you're kind of going further the other way. She wasn't kidnapped, she was murdered and her corpse mutilated, paraded and spat on. And it isn't her vs 100s of murdered Palestinians, she is but a figurehead representing hundreds dead in Israel.

In any case, tallying up which side did what and who was worse really isn't productive here, it won't lead to any useful kind of resolution. The issue isn't what they do, because at this point they've pretty much done it all before. The issue is that people on both sides keep doing it.

[–] FMT99 31 points 1 year ago (17 children)

Agreed. There's only one solution. The UN needs to disarm both sides, depose their governments and make the whole area a UN protectorate. Remove any illegal settlements. Try anyone on both sides involved in war crimes or human rights violations.

Israel and Palestine can not behave like grown ups? Take away their toys and put them in time out.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

A foreign military occupation of an entire region in the Middle East to ensure peace.

Does anyone remember how this one goes?

[–] Wilibus 13 points 1 year ago

I'll take standing under a mission accomplished banner on an aircraft carrier for $200.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Absolutely agree. The two sides need to be separated and put in time out.

However disarming Israel is politically impossible when they're a cyber weapons super power.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (49 children)

You're acting like we're just talking about "actions" that people are "doing."

What you're ignoring is the apartheid society created by Israel. They're directly responsible for the conditions that foster this type of response.

This isn't a "both sides are just as bad" thing. One of these groups has been horrifically oppressed and kept in the largest open-air prison on the planet for nearly 100 years. Any time Hamas has attacked Israeli soldiers (you know, because they're literally kicking them out of their family homes they've lived in for generations. Which is genocide btw), Israel has responded by slaughtering hundreds to thousands of Palestinian (not Hamas) civilians. It's completely disproportionate.

I'm not defending or justifying, just trying to explain.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The Israeli-German girl is apparently still alive and in criticial condition in the Indonesian hospital in Gaza. She wasn't murdered (though of course she could still succumb to whatever was done to her).

[–] TwoGems 8 points 1 year ago

And she's also 30 while somehow being 22. The reporting on this has been atrocious.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Sorry for the German link. It's the most reliable source I could find, tho.

https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/shani-deutsche-hamas-israel-100.html

tl;dr her aunt says she's alive in a hospital. No way to verify. Assumption that she's alive is based on credit card activity.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Assumption that she’s alive is based on credit card activity.

Surely credit card activity isn't a strong indicator.

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[–] Aceticon 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Two points:

  • As her mother is calling for news about her I'll go with her belief of "not dead" until proven otherwise given how the poor girl has been turned into a - as you so well put - "figurehead" for propaganda. I confess I'm one of those weird people who prefers to believe that others are merelly "kidnapped" rather than dead.
  • I'm glad you're beginning to start to get my point about the use of figureheads to make the smaller number of people murderer on one side seem more disgusting to a western audience than the much larger number of deaths on the other side. That's exactly how propaganda works: turn individual humans into symbols and parade their horrible fate as justification to kill lots of those "other" humans most of whom are blamed by association.
[–] FederatedSaint 11 points 1 year ago (9 children)

I'm disgusted that a few days ago some terrorists attacked a music festival and killed hundreds and you're defending the terrorists. It sounds like you've been taken in by some propaganda yourself.

If condemning terrorists attacking innocent people at a music festival means I'm a product of propaganda, then so be it.

[–] Aceticon 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You're absolutelly right in condemning terrorist attacks like that one.

All terrorist attacks should be condemned, including ordering people to shelter in a specific place and bombing them as describe here.

If your condemnation is indeed Principled, then all such acts of murder for the purposed of terrifying the rest are equally repugnant and you'll condemn them equally no matter the "side" of those who did such disgusting acts.

As Principle seems to be notably absent in how so many commenters have tackled the subject matter (with only some murders being important, not others, depending on which "side" did it), I pointed it out.

[–] JWayn596 4 points 1 year ago (15 children)

Let's not forget that the act of using civilians as shields is a warcrime in the first place to prevent this kind of situation from occurring.

If Israel tells Palestinian civilians to evacuate because there's Hamas military targets in that building, and Hamas troops tell them no. Then they die, and Hamas can cry wolf.

It would be Israel who is following international decorem and Hamas making it difficult for any country to support them.

Just now, Austria cut off aid to the Gaza region. Is that Israel's fault? Nope.

Hamas had good PR going and they fucked it up by escalating with brutality.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

See, on the one hand you’re validly calling out sensationalism and propaganda, but on the other you’re kind of going further the other way. She wasn’t kidnapped, she was murdered and her corpse mutilated, paraded and spat on. And it isn’t her vs 100s of murdered Palestinians, she is but a figurehead representing hundreds dead in Israel.

You know, google for "Anush Apetyan" and consider that Israel is Azerbaijan's main military supplier after Russia, and almost an ally, and nothing from what Azerbaijani troops are doing (just the same Hamas stuff) seems to have any effect.

Also Israel is a genocide-denier state. Israelis on the Web like to behave all cynical and realpolitik-enjoying and "what are you going to do" on subjects similar to what Hamas has done in Sderot etc.

I'd say there is an element of crocodile tears in this.

Action should be taken to prevent anybody doing anything like this again, to Israelis or anybody else, but that doesn't mean Israel somehow got moral. Promoting that would be exploiting events for propaganda.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The only reason it's not productive, in your opinion, is because it makes the side you support look REALLY fucking bad.

"Why can't we all come together and forget the 6+ decades of horrific oppression and wildly disproportionate warfare, and all just get along?"

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[–] SCB 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It's actually because the "refugee camp" is a city of 120,000 people that have been there for 76 years in permanent buildings.

It was struck because militants were firing from it. Yes, there will be civilian casualties while Hamas is hiding in civilian structures. That's what Hamas does.

You're falling for their playbook, their propaganda machine, so to speak. Everyone knew this was going to happen the moment Hamas struck.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Everyone knew this was going to happen the moment Hamas struck.

This. All part of the terrorist's playbook - invoke persecution to radicalise more people.

It doesn't make Israel's behavior ok, but the crocodile tears are a bit sickening.

[–] homura1650 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Beyond just 'not ok', Israel's response is playing out exactly how the terrorist's playbook says the terrorized country should respond: terrorist launches a terrorist attack, terrorized country responds with forced, civilians hit in the crossfire blame the terrorized country and move towards the terrorists.

In the past few days, we have been hering Israeli officials refer to this as their 9/11. What they do not seem to appreciate with their comparison is that the emotion ladden responce the US engaged in after 9/11 proved to be one of the greatest military blunders in the countries history.

If they want to learn a lesson from 9/11, they should address the immediate military threat, fix the security and intelligence failures that allowed the attack to be so successful (such as diverting soldiers away from the Gaza border; and (allegedly) ignoring warnings that Hamas was planning an attack). Once the immediate concerns are addressed, they should back off and allow time for cooler heads to think through what a strategically effective response would look like and implement that.

Unfortunately, such a response is politically difficult in the best of circumstances. Given that the current ruling coalition is almost the definition of hotter heads, built itself up on the promise of "security", and was already on shaky ground domestically, I don't think they have many options other than a rash response.

Hopefully they constrain themselves to just responding in Gaza. If they decide to respond by going after Hamas's supporters in, say Iran, we are looking at a major regional war.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Yeah, everyone is focusing on the brutality of Hamas' murders instead of the numbers.

I'm sure Hamas would be using airstrikes against Israel, if they could.

[–] greenmarty 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

War is horrible and the granparents of today's Palestinians were unjustly hunted and hurt. But if Hamas had not gone on slaughter spree on civilians and their fighters would not be hiding behind their their own kids and women to protect themselves from retaliation, maybe the fight would take place strictly between combatants or even better, on the social media and internet to show what's wrong.
And no, it doesn't matter whether kid is EU, Arabian or any other looking. When there was earthquake not long ago, everyone was sympathetic with middle east looking kids being pulled out of debris.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (7 children)

There's been an earthquake just a few days ago in Afghanistan, Pakistan etc, killing more than 2000 people, and by your comment I can see you don't even know about it.

And I was arguing against Hamas immediately after it happened, but now I'm arguing against Israel because the original comment is right, they have now adjusted all their propaganda tools to use the events to justify ethnic cleansing with lots of civilian dead right now.

Gazan women and children are not responsible for "their fighters" or Hamas, just as Israeli women and children are not responsible for bombs falling on Gaza.

I'm disgusted with both, but proportionally to their strength.

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[–] dx1 9 points 1 year ago (8 children)

The "human shields" reasoning has been circulating for at least a decade. "Look, we had to kill the civilians, the militants were hiding behind them!" I don't know on what planet that reasoning is supposed to be acceptable.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hamas had not gone on slaughter spree on civilians

Israel has killed 22x more Palestinians than Isralies have died from all pro-Palestine groups https://www.ochaopt.org/data/casualties

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