To be fair, Hamas did invade Israel, kill thousands of civilians and and kidnap hundreds more. And also they've been occasionally shooting rockets at Tel Aviv for decades; the fact that Israel's missile defense system has an excellent track record of shooting those rockets down doesn't change the fact that they constitute attacks.
But to be balanced, Israel's response has been nearly as disproportionate as the US' after 9/11, and somehow even more hamfisted. It's so bad, in fact, that it is reasonable to conclude, as I and many others have, that Israel's intent is not to protect itself but to annihilate the Palestinian people in what many, myself included, justifiably consider to be a genocide.
Basically this is a situation where there are evil elements controlling the governments of both sides of the conflict; the genocidal Netanyahu regime on the Israeli side and the equally genocidal Hamas leadership on the Palestinian side. And their respective civilians are caught in the middle. The only difference is that Israel has such a massive upper hand that their civilians are generally safe from Hamas, whereas Palestinian civilians are absolutely not safe from the Netanyahu Regime.
To further reinforce this, Netanyahu reportedly has gotten lots flak in Israel’s government for “not going far enough”. Some truly evil people up in there.
Israel is a good example of why sometime having multiple parties isn’t as good people make it out to seem. In order to form the majority coalition they give more power to smaller more radical parties. Not too say Netanyahu isn’t responsible
Israel has been militarily occupying Gaza for over twenty years, with daily killing and injury of Palestinian civilians, including children.
even if 10/7 had been twice as deadly it would still only have been a fraction of the death and suffering Israel has caused to people who's only crime was living next to a colonial apartheid state.
You need to look further back in history if you want to get a decent understanding of this conflict. Like, 1300 years further back.
I wrote a really long comment about it elsewhere in this thread if you're interested, but the gist of it is that both sides of the Judaism/Islam conflict share blame and both sides will have to give up their hatred before it can end. Until then we can only give humanitarian and political aid to minimize the suffering of whichever side is suffering the most at the time.
A pissed off hawk may want to kill you; he just can't. Doesn't change the fact that you shouldn't attach knives to his talons and teach him to wield them with deadly proficiency.
God, those things are some of the most annoying enemies in all of Elden Ring. Even worse than the billion handed monstrosities that just emerge from the ground and slap you to death.
No. Netanyahu pursued policies despite knowing they would strengthen Hamas, because he wants to keep his power and having a common enemy to point to and scare your people with is an effective way of maintaining power. That is not really the same thing. Close, but not the same.
Also, this conflict itself has roots much older than either the Israeli State or Hamas. Like, more than a thousand years older.
As I've said elsewhere in this thread, all we can really do from the sidelines is try to alleviate suffering wherever we can. Right now that means working to end Israel's genocide in Gaza. But that doesn't mean we can forget that this is an ancient conflict that won't end when the current genocide does.
October 7th did not happen in a vacuum. 80 years of the Irgun, the horrors of Plan Dalet and the Nakba, and the openly genocidal intent of Smoltritch, Ben-Gvir, Gallant, and Netanyahu, but you act surprised that they attacked back. Not to mention new Israeli military reports that they deployed the Hannibal Doctrine and ignored intelligence about the pending attack.
Hamas has tried multiple times to surrender and was denied.
Innocents do not deserve to die. Your argument appears to be that we must be understanding of Israel's anger over a situation they have complete control over. The idea that "they will do a genocide back" is ugly Islamophobia.
Edit: Down voted with no views? That's absolutely bot activity LOL
There isn't, though. You are conflating actual antisemitism in history with the Zionism of Israel and call it "a millennia long conflict."
Jews have been persecuted in history. That has NOTHING to do with Israel's genocide of Palestine, does not justify their actions, and this just creates a false equivalency between a nuclear-armed apartheid ethnostate and the subjugated people of Palestine.
I stand ten toes down against your statement. That is actually antisemitic, calling Israel's genocide "a millennia long conflict." It is not and implies the racist idea that Islam and Judaism are inherently violent toward one another.
The Jewish and Islamic faiths have been at odds since like the 5th century or something. To talk about the Palestinian genocide as though it had nothing to do with this centuries old bad blood between the State Religion of Israel and the predominant religion of Palestine is like looking at racial tensions in the U.S. and saying they're a result of the race riots in the 1960s.
Like these are two groups of people who have not liked each other for a very long time, and whose hardliners will happily jump on any opportunity or excuse to harm the other group. I'm not saying that the past 80 years of apartheid have nothing to do with it, or even that they haven't been one of the primary driving forces behind Palestinian hostility towards the State of Israel; they absolutely have! I'm just saying that this entire thing exists within the larger context of a territorial and ideological dispute that can be traced back to the destruction of the Second Temple by Roman forces during their conquest of Judea and then subsequent building of the Dome of the Rock by one of the early Caliphates after they captured it from the Romans.
The point I'm trying to make is that apartheid is never justified, and anger towards an oppressive apartheid regime is absolutely justified, and also that even before the apartheid these two groups have hated each other, and that older conflict is a major part of what led to the apartheid.
I'm done discussing this. If I haven't explained it well enough by now I doubt that I'm capable of doing so.
Except nothing about their faiths make them hate each other. You are describing centuries-old regional tensions as if it's a matter of modern fact and justification to Israel's ongoing genocide.
And yes, the marginalized communities in America still harbor unhealed wounds from the painful apartheid of chattel slavery, in addition to our other many persecutions of hispanic, Asian, and other peoples. Rightfully so. Unless you're trying to say that Israel is the white oppressor, which would only be agreeing with me in the comparison of disproportionate power, violence, and blind racist hatred.
"Two groups of people who haven't liked each other." Israel was created under the Balfour Declaration and subsequent Partition Resolution 181 in 1947. Christians, Muslims, and Jewish communities lived together in Palestine for centuries. The people were separated, the Irgun and similar racist colonial settler Zionists violently antagonized the natives, and the natives rightfully developed animosity toward their violent invaders. You are doing actual antisemitism by conflating Zionism with Judaism.
It's not that you are incapable of "explaining it well enough," it's that you are making points that I'm arguing against and you can't defend the substance of the argument. You are perfectly capable of articulating, as evidenced by your comments. There is a distinct separation between something being unjustifiable and being incapable of picking the best words in an argument.
Say it with me. "There is no justification of both apartheid AND/OR genocide." You are headed in the right direction, but let's complete the train of thought.
Also, say this with me. "Zionism is not Judaism. Zionism is a separate ideology, and not all Jewish people are Zionist."
Hamas was a response to Israel's invasion. I'm not gonna say that they're the good guys since they target civilians in their attacks but to go into such depth to explain why both sides are bad without even mentioning that Israel is the original aggressor in this conflict is negligent at best and a lie by oommission at worst.
The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is really just a continuation of ancient tensions between Judaism and Islam. This conflict is much, much older than the Israeli state, and to be honest neither side truly "started it".
The conflict between Islam and Judaism has been ongoing since the 7th century at least. Both religions have the same Holy Spot (for different reasons), and both have always wanted their own temple to exist there, not the other's.
The Jewish people had had a temple there for centuries when it was destroyed by the Byzantines. They rebuilt it, only for it to again be destroyed by the Romans, who them occupied the territory, preventing another temple from being built. Then the Muslims captured it from the Romans and built the Dome of the Rock as well as the mosque that stands there today.
The Jews can legitimately and truthfully say "We were there first, and the Holy Land was stolen from us!", and the Muslims can legitimately and truthfully say "But we're there now! You can't just steal our Holy Land from us!"
It is not a conflict that can be resolved as long as either side hates the other. Both sides must mutually device to lay down their arms and give up their exclusive claim to their Holy Land.
This is not and will never be a morally straightforward conflict, no matter how much anyone wants it to be. In the end all we on the sidelines can do is work to minimize suffering and death on both sides in the hope that they can one day forgive each other.
Right now there is more suffering and death on the side of the Palestinians in Gaza, so they are the ones who need the bulk of humanitarian and political aid right now. But that can and probably will change at some point in the future, whether it's ten years from now or fifty.
I’d agree if you said the British or the UN were as they took the land and divided it up to create Palestine and Israel. Once both countries were drawn up Palestine and its citizenry obviously were against the creation of a Jewish state within the land they lived on and attacked first after UN resolution 181(II) in 1947. Which started the first civil war.
They haven’t stopped fighting since.
Though you could go back further when the area was owned by the Ottomans as fighting between the Jewish community and Palestinian communities started started escalating in the 1880’s though this was more akin to gang violence than war
It has the same energy as people bringing up that women and children died during the Haitian Slave Revolt. 💀 "How dare these victims of rape, apartheid, and oppression react violently to their situation!?"
Because it gets in the way of the "both sides bad, best to just watch passively and not take a stance" narrative. And not taking a stance and allowing the status quo to continue just so happens to benefit Israel.
I'll admit I used to be one of those people who thought this conflict was just too complicated to decide who was at fault. And then I did some actual reading about the history of Gaza and it became clear that Israel is 100% at fault while Palestine is an imperfect victim but a victim nonetheless.
53
u/T_Weezy 4d ago edited 4d ago
To be fair, Hamas did invade Israel, kill thousands of civilians and and kidnap hundreds more. And also they've been occasionally shooting rockets at Tel Aviv for decades; the fact that Israel's missile defense system has an excellent track record of shooting those rockets down doesn't change the fact that they constitute attacks.
But to be balanced, Israel's response has been nearly as disproportionate as the US' after 9/11, and somehow even more hamfisted. It's so bad, in fact, that it is reasonable to conclude, as I and many others have, that Israel's intent is not to protect itself but to annihilate the Palestinian people in what many, myself included, justifiably consider to be a genocide.
Basically this is a situation where there are evil elements controlling the governments of both sides of the conflict; the genocidal Netanyahu regime on the Israeli side and the equally genocidal Hamas leadership on the Palestinian side. And their respective civilians are caught in the middle. The only difference is that Israel has such a massive upper hand that their civilians are generally safe from Hamas, whereas Palestinian civilians are absolutely not safe from the Netanyahu Regime.