Hamas: Bad guys
Israeli government: Bad guys
Innocents on both sides are just caught in the middle of both Hamas and Israel committing to collective punishment which is a war crime.
I don't know what's so hard about admitting that both sides are indeed at fault here.
The thing is you also have to admit the power imbalance at play here.
Both sides suck, but one side has the power to stop making the situation worse and stop abusing millions as they colonise their land.
This can never end or start to heal until the fucked up treatment of Palestinians stops. All they are doing is breeding tomorrow’s fighters.
Oh, I don't disagree, but Hamas committing similar atrocities isn't helping. A war crime is a war crime is a war crime. Targeting innocent civilians is never justified, and that is something both sides continue to do: target innocent civilians. Both sides essentially are involved in collective punishment of each other. In other words, war crimes.
Both sides are guilty as hell of some really fucked up shit. Yes, Israel is the occupier, but it doesn't justify killing innocents. Period.
Just like killing innocents in Palestine makes more sympathizers for Hamas, killing innocents in Israel just makes more sympathizers for the Israeli right-wing like Netanyahu.
It's a two way street and while Palestine has been oppressed for 50-some-odd years now, it just doesn't justify killing people who had nothing to do with making those decisions.
I think an apt comparison is Russia and Ukraine right now. I fully support Ukraine in this war, and part of that is not just because they're the underdog who got unjustifiably invaded, but because they take care to avoid targetting innocent civilians. For example, when they strike Sevastopol, they strike military facilities, never residential areas. Whereas Russia intentionally terrorizes the Ukrainian people, kidnaps Ukrainian children, targets residential areas, and commits so frickin many war crimes.
If the attack by Hamas were against legitimate military targets, I don't think there would be many people out here questioning it. But they didn't. They are a fundamentalist religious group that wishes to commit genocide, and they intentionally targeted and mass-murdered civilians. Beyond that, by attacking a music festival, they targeted people who were statistically more likely to be sympathetic to their cause. Clearly their goal is not simply self defense, but genocide.
Also a good comparison is the PLO in West Bank, as they aren't Hamas and had no hand in this attack. In fact, they and Hamas hate each other. And as far as I'm aware, PLO just wants the two-state solution and haven't officially sanctioned terrorist attacks in ages. Unfortunately, Hamas has likely managed to discredit the PLO cause, despite them not having any guilt in this.
And as far as I’m aware, PLO just wants the two-state solution and haven’t officially sanctioned terrorist attacks in ages.
That's... complicated. There is a fund that the PA pays the PLO to administer called the Palestinian Authority Martyrs Fund. It pays out stipends to the family of Palestinians who have been killed, imprisoned, or hurt while attacking Israel. This has been a point of contention for a long time, but it's apparently very popular among Palestinians so politicians are loath to touch it.
Yes both sides are targeting innocent civilians, and this is not cool.
But only one side is colonising a people’s land, imprisoning them in ghettos, and destroying their future.
Hence why criticism of Israel should always be greater
Hamas knows this. And they knew that Israel would respond with disproportionate force. They only care about destroying Israel and the Jews, per their charter, and they aren’t afraid to sacrifice as many Palestinian lives as it takes.
Maybe Russia got Iran to get Hamas to attack Israel knowing that Israel would go full scale, knowing that the USA is all in on Israeli support, thus reducing their aid to Ukraine?
Yup. The meme and simple “everyone is bad” explanation doesn’t touch on the fact that this is an asymmetrical war.
But one side lives in suburbs and the other in an open-air prison, without medical supplies, under permanent drone surveillance, oh and every 5 years all the buildings get flattened.
I don't know what's so hard about admitting that both sides are indeed at fault here.
Well that perspective disagrees with both flavors of propaganda. It's fucking true but nobody with a horse in the race will agree with you ever.
It definitely seems like a perspective that you have to be able to step back and be like "neither side is justified in their behavior" which is hard for people with a horse in the race to do.
It’s understandable too, how do you convince someone to stop fighting back so their enemy will stop punching them?
Like, remember when your parents told you that the best way to stop arguing with someone was to just stop arguing?
This is the same situation but instead of just arguing they’re literally committing war crimes and terrorist acts against each other.
Hard to say who started it in the moment when both are acting, and when everyone is acting in it frankly the who started it becomes irrelevant when there is only one good solution, for everyone to stop.
how do you convince someone to stop fighting back so their enemy will stop punching them?
Heck, part of it is you have to convince people to stop treating others as a monolith. Even the language of "their enemy will stop punching them" implies the entire populace of Israel is one monolith united in oppressing the Palestinians and that the entire population of Palestine is one monolith united in actively fighting Israel.
People need to be able to take a step back and recognize that their enemies are not the common folk, the innocent civilians. Most people just want to live their lives. Only a small minority is ever actually actively engaged in the fighting, or the political decisions to continue fighting.
Israelis (at least those that support Netanyahu and the apartheid state) need to collectively realize that having an apartheid state is not "fighting back"; it's just punishing 99% innocents. Likewise, Hamas needs to realize that mass murdering civilians is not "fighting back"; it's just punishing 99% innocents. True fighting back requires actually finding the people responsible for harming you, not ascribing blame to rando civilians just because they happen to have been born on the same side of the border as your true enemies.
...and you're treated as culturally insensitive if you point out that it's partially motivated because of two bullshit ass religions, and the reason they won't stop is because they've each just got to prove their God has the bigger dick, even though they're technically the same God.
When two children are arguing an adult steps in and separates them each into their own timeout corner.
That's what needs to be done, but good fucking luck with that.
Hamas does not really have a propaganda machine. Israel does.
slight difference here, while Hama's goal is singular, to kill as many civilians as possible, israels goal is to abolish the hostile militia on it's border, the civilians killed are a casualty of war, and not the target, once said militia uses civilians as human shields and commits all of these atrocities, you just can't submit to their shields.....
It's crazy how people seem to think they have to take sides in an argument. It's okay to say both sides are fucked up. There's plenty of videos showing Israeli kids talking about how they want to kill the Arabs, and there was that whole ass Disney/sesame street knock-off in Palistine that sang about AK-47s.
You got a line on that singalong?
I'll get you the song when I (re)find it, but for now here's the Wikipedia page.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow%27s_Pioneers
For transparency, it appears they did eventually cancel the show, but I don't know if it had to do with the content or the use of a very clearly Mickey Mouse-based character.
Edit: here's the video. To correct myself, it seems to be a poem and not a song. I should also clarify I don't speak Arabic, so I am relying on the provided subtitles.
https://youtu.be/gi-c6lbFGC4?si=YQZQ6Kr7b8cdeDPu
The line in question is near the 2:30 mark.
Listen fam I know we need to condemn the war crimes and violence of both sides. But a message we can rally behind was taught to me by The Kavernacle.
Hamas is, like the IRA, an extreme and desperate response to dehumanizing conditions laid out by Israel. Israel has put these people into worse than third world conditions. They use Hamas as a wedge to treat all Gazans worse. Israel has the power in this situation.