I think the person you’re replying to is being facetious based on your comment. Saying no good guys, alluding to the fact that the actors involved are all guilty of atrocities in some way. Not that they’re trying to be “politically correct”, but then again, I could be entirely wrong… ¯\༼ •́ ͜ʖ •̀ ༽/¯
I don’t think the Netanyahu regime are the good guys, but I didn’t think the Trump regime were the good guys either. I don’t endorse blaming a nationality for the actions of shitty leaders, especially shitty leaders who have directly undermined democracy in their countries.
Wild to me that you conflated Netanyahu and Trump, rather than Israel and Hamas. But either way, I agree.
I don’t think what Hamas has done is “cool, chill and dope”, but I certainly understand living under the violence of apartheid and becoming violent yourself.
Especially when your prayer, worship and protest are met with military action by your “supervisor”(?)
What else are you supposed to do if you’re a Palestinian? They can’t even live a normal day of peace, that doesn’t exist for them.
This is disingenuous. Israel (and the international community) have offered concession after concession, compromise after compromise. Palestine/Arab orgs/Hamas have rejected them out of hand.
In case any reads this as affirming their belief that communists are fans of genocide, other communists from Vietnam invaded Cambodia and stopped the genocide referred to by the ‘killing fields.’
It’s so hard though, people really want to pick a side and I get that because it makes it much easier to think about and emotionally deal with but the reality is it’s a painfully complex situation.
The same question exists for Israelis, the only reason they aren’t being massacred is because of their hugely expensivel security systems and the fact every citizen does three years of military service - if their whole existence wasn’t focused on protecting themselves there would be a very different political climate and far better people in power.
And yes it’s easy to say ‘they shouldn’t be there in the first place’ but that’s also very reductive, a lot of things in history shouldn’t have had to happen but it’s too late now - what are they supposed to do just stop existing? Of course that is what a lot of people want to happen, the countries funding Hamas and Hezbollah for example…
The hard truth is Israel would never be in the position Palestine is, they’re either strong enough to defend themselves or they all get killed - I wouldn’t want to be in either sides shoes.
I think a defining moment of your comment was at the end, when you said, “ they’re either strong enough to defend themselves or they all get killed - I wouldn’t want to be in either sides shoes. “
One IS strong enough to defend themselves and the others are the ones getting slaughtered.
But you agree if Israel couldn’t defend themselves they’d have all been killed long ago?
What are they supposed to do just sit idle and accept that powerful nations are going to continue to train, supply and support terrorists attacking them? That they’ll never feel safe and will regularly have to accept the deaths of loved ones in terror attacks?
I don’t think Israel is acting well but also I have experienced the reaction of people when terrorists attack the city they live in and simply can’t believe any nation would respond much better - and again I want to say that im only talking about the Israelie perspective and likewise were any other nation in the position of Palestine they would react pretty much how Palestine is reacting - and of course you can go back and say well this happened because of this and that happened because of that… At a certain point it’s of course England’s fault but they had literal boats full of emaciated victims of histories most brutal oppression with no where to put them that wouldn’t cause decades of chaos and violence.
The raw truth is history is ugly and messy, the Jewish people have been victims for centuries so it’s really not hard to see why a portion of them are going to be very obsessive about self defence. Why a portion of them aren’t going to have patience for the 763rd group of people to say they should be pushed into the sea and eradicated entirely.
If we could draw a line under history and say the past doesn’t matter that would be great but of course it’s not that simple, it’s never simple.
Yes, they are. My CEO sent out an email this morning about how he’s saddened by “the attacks on Israel” and glad “all our Israeli employees are safe”. He closed with “we stand with Israel”. No mention of any sadness or fucks given for all the dead Palestinian civilians.
Heh, I had a similar reaction when reading a similar email. There certainly have been “Horrific terrorist attacks”. Except from all sides… for many decades…
God I remember during the George Floyd protests our CEO sent an email statement that was basically “blue lives matter”. I was happy to leave that company.
CEO suddenly emailed out a “terrorism is never ok” email early this week expressing concern and acknowledging the pain of the Hamas attacks…as if anything has occured in a vacuum there in the last 60 years.
I do not apologize for the murders by Hamas over the weekend, just as I do not for the now even more retaliatory murders by Israel. Montagues and Capulets both were assholes. The idea any organizational head from some random industry in a foreign country could even understand the basic dynamics, let alone decades of murder and loss on both sides, and still make a statement that would in any way walk a line of objectivity is so startlingly naive it boggles the mind. And other than their fucking irrepressible egoism, they would claim they’re doing this for their employees? Company? Just STFU when you don’t know the field of play!
There was a controversial and sexist bait letter someone at Google wrote before being let go and it was heavily propped up by right wing media as an example and justification that everything Google does from now on is left wing because they’re cancelling this poor sexist man.
My first long term job’s company instructed HR to print out the letter and give a strong endorsement of it for seemingly no reason. It basically just read to me as, “Women have strongsuits other than business success like emotions and raising children and their lack of pay is actually justified and good.” that they wanted to come from our female head of HR as opposed to our do nothing remote from Florida male CEO. These rich people are no smarter than anyone else, they just use bigger words as they stick their foot down their own throat.
I was arguing with someone about that. Their unwavering position was that population in Gaza is growing, so it cannot be a genocide. UN genocide definition was wrong in their eyes. I tried to compromise to call it “only” ethnic cleansing, they seemed unimpressed. Then they called me a tankie.
Just take that in: it’s not a genocide because not enough evil sand people died. What the actual fuck?
What the fuck. Who are they listening to? I have also heard the “UN genocide definition is wrong” argument - but because it’s incomplete. The UN definition is too strict to categorize all genocides into.
Shooting from tbe hip on this exact stat, but 10 - 15% of the population of Gaza is over 25. Gaza is basically 2 million children and teenagers. Whom all have PTSD.
Why the hell would it? There is no legal requirement for a presidential candidate to provide tax returns. And there is a huge difference between voluntarily disclosing your own tax returns and an IRS agent exposing somebody else’s returns.
The UK will send surveillance aircraft and two Royal Navy ships to the eastern Mediterranean in plans “to support Israel", No 10 says.
The aircraft will begin patrols tomorrow to “track threats to regional stability such as the transfer of weapons to terrorist groups”.
The British armed forces will be on standby to “deliver practical support to Israel and partners in the region, and offer deterrence and assurance”, Downing Street said.
Under the plans, a Royal Navy task group will be moved to the area next week to support humanitarian efforts.
“Our military and diplomatic teams across the region will also support international partners to re-establish security and ensure humanitarian aid reaches the thousands of innocent victims of this barbaric attack from Hamas terrorists,” Mr Sunak said.
Defence Secretary Grant Shapps said the military aid “will be an undeniable display of the UK’s resolve to ensure Hamas’s terrorist campaign fails”.
The original article contains 287 words, the summary contains 150 words. Saved 48%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
No, it’s announcing their cowardice. They use ‘terrorist’ for any other non-Israel/Palestine attack (9/11, London Bridge, 7/7, etc) so the entire argument is invalid.
The lawyers told them not to because everyone’s scared of being called anti-semitic, that’s all
I approve of it. Terrorist is a loaded term designed to draw an emotional response from the reader. Every nation could be called a terrorist organization. Any rebellion could be called terrorists. It’s not a useful term. It’s especially not useful in this case because the number killed by Israel is so much higher than Hamas.
Terrorist is generally just a term used to describe those without power using the tools of their oppressor against them. Fear and violence are only “allowed” to be used if you’re the one with power, for whatever reason. It’s stupid.
Domestic attacks and attacks against allies will be called terrorist attacks obviously, because they see value in supporting the status quo.
Well sure, I agree. But the BBC isn’t taking the moral high ground here. They have previously and will again use the word ‘terrorist’ to evoke an emotional response for international attacks.
Interestingly, on their Bitsize page, they describe the Palestinian Liberation Front as a terrorist group, which is true. The mere fact that they have a page on ‘terrorism’ indicates that they don’t take a moral position against the word, just against calling Israel (and Israeli factions/allies) terrorists - www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zy7nqhv/revision/1
Under international law the Palestinians have a right to resist the occupation. That their tactics are not always in accordance with international law is a point you can make only if you recognise that Israel violates these laws far more frequently, and far more brutally, causing far more deaths and an indescribable amount of misery for millions, every day.
The BBC will never describe Israel as a terrorist state and so they are quite correct not to label Palestinian resistance as terrorism.
It’s a very one-sided genocide. It’s just plain ridiculous to equate the two sides when it was Zionists who stormed the Arab mandate in 1947, Zionists (and later, Israel) who created hundreds of thousands of refugees with millions still stuck in miserable camps on the borders, Israel who has kept Palestinians under brutal occupation and blockade since 1967, and Israel who bombs densely populated cities with fighter jets while the brand new Hamas air force is using hang-gliders powered by fans.
It’s such a difficult thing to explain to people whose primary exposure to the conflict is through the Western media but these accounts, by two Palestinian and Israeli non-violent activists, are well worth a read. Unfortunately I can’t find the original transcripts so it’s a google books extract and is missing some of George’s testimony.
It’s not a suffering Olympics. Yes, the history is tumultuous, and yes, the State of Israel has more than likely caused way more suffering to Palestinians than Hamas has to Israelis. But that’s besides the point. The point is, civilians on both sides are now paying the price. No one wants to get shot at or bombed, and support for either side’s civilian population is NOT tacit support of the militants of the opposite side.
What they mean as that they could also say Israel is a terrorist state. That’s what some people think. And some people, specially those who have friends or family who have been killed in Palestina, might say that Hamas are defending their people and are not terrorists.
But you and me, citizens without voice, can call them terrorists (that’s what they are) but doing so we are somehow chosing a band in a conflict.
While I get what you mean, I don’t think it should automatically mean (even a lot of people think it does) that you can either say Hamas is a terrorist group or Israel is a terrorist state.
In my own view both are terrorist, both commit atrocities and the result of that are innocent lives lost from both sides.
I despise centrism so saying that hurts a little bit on the inside, but this is one of the rare cases where fighting at all is meaningless and both sides that are fighting (and commiting atrocities) are in the fault.
I’m not sure I’d call Israel a terrorist state, but absolutely an apartheid state.
If you live in Gaza, you really don’t have a lot to lose by attacking Israeli non-combatants, because you have no hope, and the Israeli gov’t keeps going farther and farther to the right. Gaza looks a lot like the Warsaw ghettos prior to rounding all the Jews up and murdering them. The uprisings in the Warsaw ghetto were punished with the same kind of wildly disproportionate force as we’re already seeing Israel use against Gaza.
Hamas and Palestinian militants were, and are, wrong to target and murder non-combatants. And, at the same time, Israel has been doing exactly the same fucking thing for 20-odd years now; from 2008 through 2020, more than 120,000 Palestinians–mostly non-combatants–were wounded or killed by the Israeli military. In that same time period, 6,000 Israelis were wounded or killed by Palestinian militants.
Israel can not claim to be a democracy, because they refuse to give Palestinians a voice in government at all.
As an aside, the parallels between how Israel has treated Palestinians, and how the US has treated Native Americans is uncomfortable.
I’m not sure I’d call Israel a terrorist state, but absolutely an apartheid state. […] Israel can not claim to be a democracy, because they refuse to give Palestinians a voice in government at all.
There are two million Arab citizens of Israel, the vast majority of whom are Muslim. They vote. There are Arab Muslims in the Knesset.
This is a somewhat different situation from that of blacks in apartheid South Africa, who were denied civil rights on the basis of their race and ancestry.
I’m not saying Israeli society treats Arab Israeli citizens fairly or that there isn’t social discrimination. I haven’t been there; and from all reports there certainly is. But I think you’re exaggerating … or else understating how bad “actual” (South African) apartheid was.
Given that Israelis can, and do, burn out Palestinians in the occupied areas in order to seize their land, and Israeli authorities do nothing, and even help the arsonists, I don’t think that I’m overstating that. Moreover, the Arab voices in the Knesset are a minuscule minority; I think it’s something like a total of 5 seats, while Likud and their far-right allies have 63 seats.
bbc.co.uk
Hot