Asklemmy

If you were in power in Israel, and care for its citizens, what would your steps be as reaction to what happened? Please imagine both short and long term consequences.

All the evidence so far tells me that nobody is serious about stopping the violence. The only way the violence will end in this region is if the entire region is turned into a sheet of glass.

My only interest in the region is ensuring that the violence continues, until such time as an option other than "glass them all" presents itself.

An ongoing genocide or a genocide in hindset? And what kind? It would largely depend. Often when we give people money and they happen to use that money to pay for misdeeds, some people come back and accuse us of financing that misdeed. On the contrary, in any situation on Earth at any time, we have to be prepared for any given situation to have unconforming parts and pieces. In this situation, it's not like the government gives us a contract that says "here, sign this to show you agree to what we're going to use your taxpayer money for". If they did, I wouldn't sign, because my ethics as a relationship anarchist extend to politics, but they're not playing by relationship anarchist rules, so I become something to squeeze money out of without explanation, and it becomes less understandable how any burden is at play, especially when people start pressuring us to conform and cheat the system so-to-speak. We can try our best though.

https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/protestors-block-downtown-seattle-streets-amid-middle-east-war/QHUUZH3QQNBL7IB7I7UPY6EKZM/

I'm not sure if it constitutes genocide yet, but it's fair to say it's going that direction. For every dead group A, group B wants to kill 10 group A people, and vice-versa. There's two ways that can stop; either they bury the hatchet or one group is entirely wiped out.

As for how I feel about my government, actually kind of hopeful. I was expecting SNAFU but it's clear the Canadian government is actually having to consider the Palestinian perspective this time around.

In the US, speaking the truth about the Israel-Palestine ::cough::Palestinian genocide::cough:: war will get you cancelled by AIPAC astroturfers and useful idiots who just cancel who they’re told to cancel. That’s how they (the AIPAC, the military industrial complex, and AIPAC-run film industry..if you don’t believe me, why was Harvey Weinstein so friendly with ex-Mossad agents that he was able to use them against his opponents?) manufacture consent among normal people these days.

Additionally, 35 US states have anti-bds laws on the books punishing US citizens that choose not to buy products from Israel. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws In many of those US states you can be fired from government jobs for refusing to buy Israeli products in your own personal life.

ROFL!

I don't feel that my country, America, is funding a genocide right now, though it's worth keeping in mind that America is the product of genocide against the Native American tribes and just about every nation in the modern world is the product of conquest at some point in history.

I can only remind myself of the facts:

• America did not create this conflict, nor did we add the fuel to escalate it. It is a wild stretch of a biased imagination to blame America for this.
• Land itself belongs to no race or nation. People fight to capture land and they fight to defend it from invaders.
• Israel and Palestine we're effectively crafted as nations at the same time by the British.
• The argument of "who was there first" is not only irrelevant but also complicated. It can be argued that the tribal ancestors of both Israel and Palestine have been there for thousands of years.
• Before the independent states of Israel and Palestine were created by the British, this area has been part of many large empires, including the Ottomans (Turks), the Islamic Caliphate, the Byzantine / East Roman empire, the Roman Empire, the Assyrians and the Egyptians. As such this area has been conquered and colonized by various peoples (maybe even your ancestors depending on where you're from) for almost the entirety of the Common Era.
• Palestine is a thorn in the side of Israel that they would rather not have to deal with. At the same time Israel is the target of many of its large and powerful neighbors, many of whom have not been shy to express their own genocidal ambitions.
• By the definition of genocide it's hard to call an attack on Gaza a Palestinian genocide when the West Bank is not also being attacked.

I won't pick a side between the nations of Israel and Palestine, instead I'll side with the innocent over those who would target and kill them.

The terrorist attacks orchestrated this week by Hamas and possibly funded by Iran and Russia were a sickening crime against humanity and should be easy for anybody with human decency in their heart to reject and condemn. At the same time, innocent Palestinians should not have to bear the brunt of Israeli rage or revenge. This situation has now escalated to full blown war, with rockets and missiles being thrown both ways, hundreds of people kidnapped from Israel, and hundreds of thousands soon to be displaced from their homes in Gaza with basically nowhere to run. It is a genuine humanitarian disaster. Israel has to respond to this attack, not only to at least attempt to save the hostages that were taken, but also to show strength against those that would try to attack them. There are no shortage of nations and groups in the middle east who despise Israel and want them wiped out, and now that they have shown weakness, as their most powerful and important ally America must come to their defense and aide as a deterrent to further attacks.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the oldest and most complicated wars in history. Everyone wants to boil this down to good and bad, but I hate to break it to you. There are no good guys here and there are no bad guys either. Or maybe you can argue that there are only bad guys, if that helps you sleep at night.

But in the end of the day, this shitshow of human horrors is nothing more than the culmination of thousands of years of history, politics, conquest, cold war, religion, prejudice, money and blood. This is war. Just like Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but actually with much more nuance and history behind it.