To anyone both sides-ing this issue, you are flattening the genocide. This is an overwhelmingly lopsided conflict. One side has the funding and backing of the largest military presence the world has ever known. One side has caged and gated the other into increasingly smaller and smaller spaces, like literal concentration camps. This one side has decided that healthcare, housing, food, water, communications, etc are not important to provide to the people who they’ve effectively imprisoned. This side has people at the highest points of leadership calling for ethnic cleansing. This side has been called out by the UN for genocide.
The other side is fighting back on their land, among their own people, in a space that is one of the densest populations on the planet per square foot, in a place with no resources, cannot leave, must defer to settlers who take their property if they leave it due to threat. None of this is by their own choosing. Guerrilla warfare is a tactic used when asymmetry is stark and is often negatively criticised without context to its necessity. Both side-sing ensures that the asymmetrical nature of this conflict remains status quo.
First of all, it assumes that there are only two sides when in reality, there’s an incredible multitude of groups and factions with their own interests - whether it’s Hamas or the IDF or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad or militant Jewish settlers or Hezbollah or the Iranian leadership or Qatar or the Houthi rebels or any of the other groups that have been involved just in this current conflict.
And secondly, it inherently blames everyone put into either Group A or Group B for the absolutely worst, horrendous atrocities committed by the most extreme elements categorized into those groups.
So suddenly, Israeli citizens who were just a few weeks ago demonstrating against the Netanyahu government are now responsible for atrocities committed by the IDF in Gaza or by some violent settlers in the West Bank. And vice versa, Palestinian families who had to flee their home, maybe lost innocent family members to arbitrary bombing campaigns and are now living as refugees under the most dire circumstances are suddenly responsible for the murder of Israeli civilians, for Israeli children burned, for young Israeli women murdered and paraded around the streets in Gaza, and for all the atrocities committed by Hamas.
That makes absolutely zero sense.
Pointing out that atrocities are being committed by many different factions and groups doesn’t constitute “both-sidesing” the issue, it’s not some kind of enlightened centrism to pretend that it’s just impossible to form an opinion on the issue.
There is no hierarchy of suffering, either. Hamas doesn’t stop being a terrorist organization just because the IDF killed more Palestinians than Hamas murdered Israelis.
But, by the same token, the Netanyahu government doesn’t stop being a right wing extremist government hell bent on destroying democratic institutions in Israel in favor of an authoritarian system just because murderous Islamist terrorists stormed across the Gaza border and killed 1,200 Israelis in the most heinous way imaginable.
And no, pointing out all of the atrocities committed in this conflict or existing empathy for all the innocent victims doesn’t equate to condoning certain atrocities committed by a certain group.
so we should just ignore Hamas’s war crimes because Israel bad.
We should ignore Hamas’s focus on killing jews specifically? Israel is bad, sure, but every time I start to think that maybe Hamas could be dealt with equitably they go and murder civilians. Just like the Israelis do.
I feel sorry for the Palestinians not aligned with Hamas, they’re the real victims in all this.
then spell it out sparky, what is he saying? it’s word salad prevarication as far as I can tell. Hamas needs to stop murdering the people trying to support palestine.
No, I am not saying that and see such misdirections as not constructive. It is a matter of focus and scale. Focus on the power structure that creates conditions upon which Hamas is formed and persists: Israeli occupation, destruction, and genocide of Palestine. The scale of the death of civilians on both sides demonstrates how Israel continues to create the conditions. I vehemently disagree with killing civilians but the civilian death count on Israel’s side is exponentially larger than Hamas’ and perpetuates the conflict, among others.
To anyone both sides-ing this issue, you are flattening the genocide. This is an overwhelmingly lopsided conflict. One side has the funding and backing of the largest military presence the world has ever known. One side has caged and gated the other into increasingly smaller and smaller spaces, like literal concentration camps. This one side has decided that healthcare, housing, food, water, communications, etc are not important to provide to the people who they’ve effectively imprisoned. This side has people at the highest points of leadership calling for ethnic cleansing. This side has been called out by the UN for genocide.
The other side is fighting back on their land, among their own people, in a space that is one of the densest populations on the planet per square foot, in a place with no resources, cannot leave, must defer to settlers who take their property if they leave it due to threat. None of this is by their own choosing. Guerrilla warfare is a tactic used when asymmetry is stark and is often negatively criticised without context to its necessity. Both side-sing ensures that the asymmetrical nature of this conflict remains status quo.
I think this is a bad take.
First of all, it assumes that there are only two sides when in reality, there’s an incredible multitude of groups and factions with their own interests - whether it’s Hamas or the IDF or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad or militant Jewish settlers or Hezbollah or the Iranian leadership or Qatar or the Houthi rebels or any of the other groups that have been involved just in this current conflict.
And secondly, it inherently blames everyone put into either Group A or Group B for the absolutely worst, horrendous atrocities committed by the most extreme elements categorized into those groups.
So suddenly, Israeli citizens who were just a few weeks ago demonstrating against the Netanyahu government are now responsible for atrocities committed by the IDF in Gaza or by some violent settlers in the West Bank. And vice versa, Palestinian families who had to flee their home, maybe lost innocent family members to arbitrary bombing campaigns and are now living as refugees under the most dire circumstances are suddenly responsible for the murder of Israeli civilians, for Israeli children burned, for young Israeli women murdered and paraded around the streets in Gaza, and for all the atrocities committed by Hamas.
That makes absolutely zero sense.
Pointing out that atrocities are being committed by many different factions and groups doesn’t constitute “both-sidesing” the issue, it’s not some kind of enlightened centrism to pretend that it’s just impossible to form an opinion on the issue.
There is no hierarchy of suffering, either. Hamas doesn’t stop being a terrorist organization just because the IDF killed more Palestinians than Hamas murdered Israelis.
But, by the same token, the Netanyahu government doesn’t stop being a right wing extremist government hell bent on destroying democratic institutions in Israel in favor of an authoritarian system just because murderous Islamist terrorists stormed across the Gaza border and killed 1,200 Israelis in the most heinous way imaginable.
And no, pointing out all of the atrocities committed in this conflict or existing empathy for all the innocent victims doesn’t equate to condoning certain atrocities committed by a certain group.
so we should just ignore Hamas’s war crimes because Israel bad.
We should ignore Hamas’s focus on killing jews specifically? Israel is bad, sure, but every time I start to think that maybe Hamas could be dealt with equitably they go and murder civilians. Just like the Israelis do.
I feel sorry for the Palestinians not aligned with Hamas, they’re the real victims in all this.
That’s not what he said
then spell it out sparky, what is he saying? it’s word salad prevarication as far as I can tell. Hamas needs to stop murdering the people trying to support palestine.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/world/middleeast/peace-activists-killed-israel.html
Yeah you really sound like someone who wants to have a good faith discussion. I’ll pass.
You sound like someone excusing the murder of innocent people as long as they’re israeli.
No, I am not saying that and see such misdirections as not constructive. It is a matter of focus and scale. Focus on the power structure that creates conditions upon which Hamas is formed and persists: Israeli occupation, destruction, and genocide of Palestine. The scale of the death of civilians on both sides demonstrates how Israel continues to create the conditions. I vehemently disagree with killing civilians but the civilian death count on Israel’s side is exponentially larger than Hamas’ and perpetuates the conflict, among others.
keep killing the civilians who were supporting your cause, that’ll help.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/world/middleeast/peace-activists-killed-israel.html
Back at ya.
🙏🏻
if you were in a ghetto what infrastructure would you be willing to destroy to escape?
depend what