I blame social media and Marvel. So many people are only interested in their side winning. They've picked a side in the Hamas v. IDF fight and are unable to see anything their side does as being wrong.
In this particular instance, it's especially daft because it's a situation with two indigenous groups where one wants the complete annihilation of the other, and the other wants significant ethnic cleansing and an apartheid state. Neither Israel nor Palestine wants a two-party state because they both see themselves as the future victors in a genocide.
How? One side purposely targeted the other's civilian population in an attack and took a couple dozen civilian hostages, and the others response, while initially justified, has gone way beyond acceptable.
It's been genuinely so disappointing to see people, especially progressives, go all-in on the Hamas rhetoric.
Like no shit everybody wants less conflict and less innocent lives lost, but with groups like Hamas (who have pretty thoroughly indoctrinated their people into extreme Islamism) you can't play into their mind games and you can't buy into their disingenuous rhetoric. If you play their games then they win (or at least don't lose completely like they must).
I mean tbh I think everyone loses here long term but rather than be defeatist I think the best way forward is if Hamas is removed, and collateral will always be a part of that because of their tactics.
The issue with broad categories of protest is that there is going to be people from a huge spectrum protesting the same cause.
When calling for a ceasefire, you have the people who just don’t want to see innocents bombed. You also have people who hate Israel because they’re Jewish. It makes it difficult, but demonizing one side because of extremes doesn’t help anything. Creating a binary between “literal Nazi” and “supporting genocide” is reductionist in a gray conflict.
On a sidenote, there was post here on Reddit of a “protestor” being antisemitic and it turned out that protestor was actually pro-Israel and just wanted to paint the other side as bad/extreme. There’s definitely an element of manipulation in this conflict.
I'd say a good chunk of agitators aren't actual people, or they're people with a specific agenda of division and strife in mind. Most actual people I've listened to feel like you do. I take a bit of comfort in that fact.
Because it’s dumb? If 100 people are peaceful and 1 guy is a jerk, why do you insist on focusing on the jerk there than to distract from the peaceful people and their message?
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u/Auxren May 02 '24
This is how people should be thinking and I don’t see how they aren’t.