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Can we not agree that both groups have done some super shitty things? Why take sides at all.
Both sides have done some super shitty things, but if you want to be objective about it, they're not balanced at all.
Still seems like a crazy own goal to issue a statement that doesn't condemn attacks on civilians, but I can understand why people feel driven to take a side, especially when virtually all the bars on the top part of that graph got effectively zero news coverage.
It's in our nature to take sides, and it's unfortunate because this is a really complicated issue. You can trace this back centuries to try and understand why everything has happened, and you'll find devils and angels in every group involved.
After Russian pogroms of Jews around the Russian Revolution time period, a prominent European Jewish thinker concluded that they would never have safety or respect unless they had their own nation. Being scapegoated and killed in Russia was just one of many instances where they were persecuted. Flash forward to the early 1900s, and you have Zionist insurgents in Mandated Palestine who want their own Jewish state, and are carrying out terrorist attacks against the British colonial authority.
We're both well aware of what Palestinians are suffering right now. I believe I just read that an Israeli airstrike killed 600 in a hospital. A few weeks ago, extremists associated with Palestine killed and kidnapped a lot of people at a concert.
Civilians just want to live in peace and freedom. They're surrounded by violence they don't remotely deserve, and that just keeps getting perpetuated. Each side kills innocent people that the other side takes as justification to kill other innocent people, and so forth.
By the numbers, Israel is worse because they've caused more casualties, I agree. But I really don't think that's important here. Significant numbers of innocent people are being killed by Hamas and also by Israel's government. Identifying both as major problems and the "bad guys", while viewing the civilians as the "good guys", is what's important I think.
Edit: Forgot to say, the problem wasn't that this guy supported Palestinians, but that they pointedly refused to condemn killing and kidnapping innocent people.
Now chart the number of attempted civilian killings and see how the picture flips.
Did you think the Israeli casualties are low because Hamas hasn't been trying to murder them?
Israel just massacred another 500 civilians by bombing a hospital.
If you care about truth, there is strong evidence that that was a misfired rocket launch from the Palestine Islamic Jihad. The IDF has released intercepted radio comms between two Hamas members discussing it, including mention of rocket launches from a graveyard behind the hospital (which would be a war crime, of course).
It's likely that there will continue to be some uncertainty for a while over what exactly happened, but it doesn't matter much, since most people have already decided what the truth is and are reacting accordingly. Surely that doesn't include you though.
Oh, wow I read the news and commented on it, and watched a video showing a missile clearly going full speed into a building and causing an explosion bigger than anything Hamas has ever done before.
What wild biased conclusions I'm drawing! /S
You have a video of a missile hitting the hospital? Genuinely, I'd love to see that.
Being “pro Israel” or “pro Palestine” are problematic positions. You don’t have to pick which of the bad guys you like more. There is no rule that says you have to have a side
I have long standing sympathies for the people of Palestine. But, they choose monsters to represent them who have never been good faith negotiators for a peaceful solution that doesn’t require genicide.
The Israelis also choose monsters to represent them. Among the other colonialist behaviors, they pursue a settlement strategy that is specifically designed to make a 2 state peace impossible.
No good guys. Stop telling everyone which side you’re on! You just telling me which color terrorist you prefer.
Afaik, like over half the population of Palestine wasn't even alive or were children when that decision was made and nobody has been given a decision since, at least not the kind of decision that doesn't involve becoming a martyr and deading yourself in exchange for deading another person.
I suppose I have no data points to tell me what is in the hearts of the majority of gaza civilians. I could I suppose, fill it in with good will and brotherhood toward man. I could fill it in with genocidal intent.
Either way, it is my choice since I can’t really know. I am not so desperate to find a good guy, that I will lie to myself and pretend I know a truth. My hunch is that the truth would be upsetting for the folks desperate to find the good guys. What about that environment would produce a culture of peace and good will?
There is data, though I won't pretend to know the exact numbers - and it needs to be remembered that polling is difficult is places like Gaza - that suggests that a majority of Gazans do support violence against Israeli civilians.
Sounds like it's high time for a change in leadership!
Wikipedia would call those 'weasel words', passive voice. Been given? Who's going to give it to them? They're independent and self-governing. If they don't agree with the actions of their leaders, they need to change leaders; neither Israel nor anybody else can do that for them.
If Hamas doesn't represent the Palestinians, and refuses to step aside, that makes them bad guys twice over: terrorists to Israel and tyrants to the Palestinians. My understanding is that they're pretty popular, though.
I worded things exactly as I meant them. They haven't been given a decision that doesn't involve a probably violent uprising, so they would have to make their own opportunity but authoritarians tend not to like that thus the deading oneself part of my comment. I think we agree ultimately.
As far as Palestinian's support for Hamas goes, I find that the whole story is honestly kind of nuanced the more I read. https://theconversation.com/hamas-was-unpopular-in-gaza-before-it-attacked-israel-surveys-showed-gazans-cared-more-about-fighting-poverty-than-armed-resistance-215640
Yeah, I read a breakdown of governance is Gaza, and it was honestly bewildering: Hamas has a few different wings for civilian and military governance, and then there's the Palestinian Authority which plays some kind of role, and a Hezbollah influence... It's a fucking mess, and it's a shame. But honestly: there's nobody in a position to help the Palestinians to pick more reasonable leaders, except possibly Iran or the Saudis exerting influence, which they're not inclined to do, because to them the Palestinians are just a piece on a chessboard.
Honestly it might help the Palestinians (though not Hamas) if Israel and Saudi Arabia normalized relationships, if only because they'd be a less useful chess piece.
They did actually. There were two ceasefires in the past and it was Israel who didn't follow them by lifting the blockade.
Go Mongooses! 🚩
This is a really refreshing perspective that's been way too rare.
I wouldn't say that I've taken a side, and I don't think that's a productive way to analyze this issue. The way I see it, there are actions that contribute to peace, and there are actions that push it further away. I support the first and oppose the second, regardless of who's doing them.
And unfortunately, there hasn't been much of the first from either party.
Because they've wandered into an echo chamber and are now hyper aware of all the real bad things on side did plus a few false bad things. While all of the bad things the other side did have been downplayed or justified.
I sadly don't know enough on the topic to say more on this. And the amount of research needed to get even an idea of "who is worse" is massive due to all the misinformation (or misleading information) on the topic everywhere.
I do know that neither side is taking a sensible approach to the problem because right wing nutbags are in charge of both sides.
I tried to trace it a while back. The specific conflict could be traced back to the after WW1, where the British thought they could expand their influence in the region by growing a Jewish population through Zionists.
That begged the question though, what started the desire for a Jewish state in the first place? Why had groups committed terrorism for that cause? It was a trail of nationalism that came from a very understandable genesis. After Russian pogroms killed innocent Jewish people (just one of many persecutions across Europe), a prominent Jewish writer opined that the only way for Jews to have safety and respect was a state of their own.
That's where I stopped, but if you continued to look, you'd end up at the Romans in Jerusalem and the Jewish Diaspora as one of the events leading here.
The only side I can take in good faith is of the civilians.
Don't think there needs to be a worse side when you're killing civilians.
Apparently not, and I don't understand why.