General Politics Discussion (X) [ARCHIVED] • Page 1621

as David touched on, people not shouting that they wholeheartedly support Palestinians 1000% no matter what actions they take now and to forever are being accused of being genocide supporting Zionists, but okay yeah, most people are smart enough not to come in here and post "I support Russia killing all Ukrainians and taking their country" - an intelligent reading of dozens and dozens of posts tying Ukraine and Ukrainians to Nazism and hundreds of posts calling Ukraine defending themselves from a full-scale invasion of their country a NATO proxy war is saying something, even if not directly

 

Israel holds full responsibility for the violence. Children living under apartheid are currently being massacred by Israel and you’re on here complaining about civility. I don’t think drawing false equivalences between the violence of the occupied and the occupier is useful for educating people and yet that’s exactly what you’re doing.

 

So sounds like Israel is considering banning Al Jazeera's coverage in Israel, trying to find a good source on this report though.

 

People are going after Carlin for this but I don’t at all read this as him *endorsing* this view, just that he’s making explicit what Zionists think and why they oppose a one state solution — precisely because they don’t want “conquest by democracy.” They want to be in control lol

 

sorry what actions have Palestinians taken to warrant not supporting them 1000%?

 

Ok but, isn’t an easy part of the solution to say some version of, “Israel is guilty of doing all the ugliest things Hamas has done but on a much larger scale, and created the circumstances that led to Hamas’ actions, and Netanyahu considers Hamas part of his official strategy”? Like, I don’t think it’s that hard to reframe the conversation.

I talked that way to my Fox News watching rust belt redneck father, and that conversation didn’t free his mind from propaganda, but he listened honestly and respectfully and asked mostly reasonable questions, lol.

 

Yes, that would be a good start! Certainly not "Well if you're sympathizing with Israel right now, you must be supporting everything they're doing in Gaza right now" lol. But even with that bolded, 1000+ people just got killed a few days ago, many people aren't going to want to hear something as blunt as "Israel did this first and bigger" right this second. The way I've personally done it in some discussions with friends is led off with the circumstances they're living in, pointing out that Gaza is full of kids/children, said they're clearly not Hamas/the people that carried out the attacks, and then kinda transition into all the Palestinians that have been killed over the years and the increase in settlement activity in the other parts of Palestine, so this attack was just looking more and more inevitable by the day, etc. But of course these are people who were already pretty open to the idea that Israel isn't simply an innocent victim, so.

 

No, that's not what I'm doing, you are incorrect, and I don't give a shit about civility. I care about convincing others that I'm right and they're wrong. I think you and the way you approach topics are really bad at it. Even worse then me!

 

I think he hasn’t liked Trump for awhile… this was from 5 years ago

 

It’s hard to even know specifically anymore what is meant by saying what Hamas did was wrong because there have been so many apparently false reports to try to make their offensive look even worse. I do say it’s tragic and killing civilians is always bad but I don’t want people to think I mean they beheaded babies and went on a rape spree like so many false stories and dipshit Biden is saying to make people dehumanize Palestinians even more. And at this point how many times do we have to say the initial attack by Hamas did bad things? Like how many days of just bombing the shit out of children by Israel until we can pivot to focusing on that? If I thought the demand to condemn Hamas killing civilians was still in good faith I’d give it more time but I don’t think it is so I’m focused on the problem which is Israel.

 

“*just*” “did this” “right this second”

Right now Palestinians have half again more casualties since last weekend.

Palestinian civilians suffer in Israel-Gaza crossfire as death toll rises

Palestinian authorities said at least 1,055 people have been killed and another 5,184 have been injured in Gaza due to Israeli retaliatory attacks.

In Israel, at least 1,200 people have died and more than 2,900 others have been injured by Hamas forces.

I don’t want to hear anything as blunt as “Hamas did it first and smaller” right this second. Israel *just* did this, and is continuing, and is going to invade tomorrow and quadruple these numbers.

 

For what it’s worth though yes you should know your audience this is a politics forum i view it as a platform for polemics but if you are talking to your friend who knows a guy in Israel and was worried he was dead you should not do polemics. hopefully doesn’t need to be said

 

Honestly, this whole conversation this week has had a lot of incredibly frustrating and ignorant whataboutism, that’s just deeply unhelpful at best and disgusting at worst.

Fixating on whether or not “the left” is “denouncing Hamas enough” really, truly, unequivocally sucks! Whether those in this thread mean it this way or not, it’s ultimately a way to reframe the conversation in a way that takes the burden of genocide off of Israel. It’s similar to fixating on rioting during Black Lives Matter protests in the face of another murder committed by a cop. I’d also argue it’s similar to how conservatives and TERFs find detransitioners to fixate on in order to morally complicate support for trans youth. It’s manipulative bullshit in bad faith, and the proper response is to recontextualize the conversation, not to give that bad faith distraction too much weight.

 

israel deserves no sympathy. it should not exist

 

yeah I work for an Israeli company, one of my colleagues I trained is based there as are at least 300 other employees in our Tel Aviv office, including the CEO. Her brother got called in to the reserves. Been a very....interesting week at work

 

yeah, but attacking those people as "not caring" instead of realizing that most of them are just plain flat out ignorant on it because their main source of information on it is American media sources that do not spend nearly enough time and energy on handfuls of Palestinians dying every day a they do a major attack that kills 1500 people or whatever, especially when those 1500 people are Israeli, etc....Like, getting mad at those people and attacking them as "not caring" again isn't going to convince them lol. Of course at least some of them will definitely not care, usually your right wing minded-adjacent people or those who hate muslims/brown people/etc. But some of them are just trying to live their lives and going to work and paying their bills and raising their families and aren't terminally online paying attention to news and are instead scrolling through reels and memes about nonsense on their phones, and then suddenly 1000-1500 people die in an attack that takes over the news and is impossible to ignore....and we're saying "hey why were you silent before? Why didn't you care before? What about all the dead Palestinians?" to them like they should have known this the whole time and damn them for trying to paint Hamas as the bad guys and etc. Just seems like bad strategy to opening people's eyes up IMO.


I will say this again seems to be little less of an issue with Millennials and especially GenZ...they're way more aware of historical context than others on average in my experience*. But of course GenZ especially is still young and impulsive and putting out statements that make a lot of those normies I"m talking about above side eyeing them like "What do you mean Israel is responsible for 1000 of their own people getting slaughtered?" etc


*I actually had a kid in one of my CP (read: lower lever) classes ask me "What's going on in Israel" today (I responded with the briefest of history lesson and sum up of what's gone on the last few days lol) and then followed up that he heard we sent a warship to the area. So it's cool that kids that many would assume aren't paying attention at all are at least getting some info on it. Maybe if it's via social media it'll be a little more balanced towards Palestine, but we also know how bad social media can be with disinfo so...double edged sword and all that

 

A reminder that people do lurk this thread and are the normies we're talking about here haha. HEll we just had a lurker admit yesterday to getting most of their info from here.

 

reading your posts in here for the last few days has made me feel like i'm rapidly losing iq points, so she's right about that

 

Hopefully they're not gutless turds and extract some concessions from it. Even if it's something as simple as being able to force some floor votes on certain issues or certain committees or etc.

 

Doctors Without Borders in Gaza says 100% of the patients it has treated in the past 24 hours have been children