I genuinely do not know who the bad guys are. S lot of my leftist friends are against Israel, but from what I know Israel was attacked and is responding and trying to get their hostages back.
Enlighten me. Am I wrong? Why am I wrong?
And dumb it down for me, because apparently I’m an idiot.
The good guys are the citizens who want none of this.
The bad guys are the citizens who want all of this, and the military personal behind the weapons, and the generals calling the shots.
Same as it ever was.
Edit: Lemmy.ml disagreed and nobody was surprised 🙀
This simplistic one size fits all argument falls flat when one side is being occupied and ethnically cleansed by the other side. It implies that Hamas is the “bad guy” and all other occupied Palestinians are the “good guy,” and it implies that non-military Israeli settlers are the “‘good guy.” But the truth is that the great majority of adult Israelis are militant settler-colonizers; and that Palestinians have the legal right under UN law to struggle against their occupiers by any means necessary, including armed struggle; and that Israel, as an occupier, has no right to “self defense.”
What does your both-sidesing accomplish here? Are you trying to say that Palestine’s resistance to colonialism isn’t justified?
If so, then you’re doing this gandhi quote, but for the palestinian resistance.
Another lemmy.ml user to the rescue.
Blocked.
The good guys are the citizens
I’m going to have to stop you right there, because the Palestinians are not the citizens of any state: they are a people being occupied, apatheided, and genocided by the state of Israel. So there’s a “very, very simple truth” for you.
Oh my goodness would you look at that it’s lemmy.ml again
Bye 👋
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out 👋
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It’s kinda funny how fediverse servers are kinda akin to countries. USonians see someone from a country on the “countries of concern” list, and instantly assume every single person from that country is sneaky, lying, acting in bad faith, or insert whatever other adjective here.
We don’t or shouldn’t make that same mistake. There are good people on every fediverse server, and we shouldn’t blanket demonize whole groups like racist colonizer ideology does.
When you can’t support your own arguments, you could of course just acknowledge this or even just not comment at all instead of lashing out at those who can.
It is particularly disgusting when your arguments serve to obscure genocide.
thank you for telling me I should block you.
Can we please block .world already?
You want to defederate from the largest Lemmy instance, the poster child, and the mascot of Lemmy? Good luck. They are Lemmy now.
Don’t care. If I gave a shit about the biggest instance because it has the most users, then I would have stayed on Reddit which has orders of magnitudes more users and to put it in the linked comment’s words, they still are link aggregators in the the commenter thinks .world “are” Lemmy. The whole damn point of federation is your instance is not locked into what the biggest instance wants to do.
That’s your own mess lol
The fact that somebody would be asking this question after a year of genocide is phenomenal.
Reminder that at the outbreak of WWII, TONS of people in the US supported the Nazi regime right up until they started invading Western Europe AKA “the countries that matter”
Also worth noting that the US continued to do business with the nazis well into the war, and IBM famously facilitated the holocaust.
Asking lemmy.ml if Israel is bad is not a great idea if you actually want a nuanced/balanced answer. Honestly, I’d recommend just taking your research elsewhere and steering clear of social media on this one.
Yes, we oppose Israel’s genocide here.
wasps 🤝 genocide
There are no good guys in that conflict. Only innocent civilians.
The guys doing the genocide and the guys fighting the genocide are the same actually /s
So many enlightened centrists both-sidesing in this thread.
Israel and its settler garrison are carrying out the standard colonialist formula throughout history (epitomized by the US model in its conquest) : eviction and genocide of the indigenous inhabitants, and theft of their lands.
This is defended under many premises, a “religious” calling, a “civilizing” venture (with orientalist undertones), and many others, but the goal is the same as all imperialist ventures: theft of land, labor, and natural resources. People from around the world, no matter how rich or poor, are invited to join in this colonial project, and many do, because of the promise of cheap land.
Predictably, Israel calls anyone who opposes this genocide as “terrorists”, even though by all reasonable definition of terrorism, its the settler garrison who are the real terrorists: murdering innocent civilians, stealing their towns, and erasing the old names. In Palestine, the largest of this event was called the Nakba, whereas in the US, the entire 1800s was a westward-expanding colonial war defeating hundreds of native tribes and killing anyone who resisted.
The US is the primary supporter of this project, because Israel is for them, a giant, unsinkable aircraft carrier / military base in the middle east, which can be used to project western military power on the resource-rich middle east. As Joe Biden said: “If Israel didn’t exist, it would be necessary for the US to invent one herself.”
I suggest watching this video, as its the best short introduction: How Palestine became Colonized.
Thanks for the info. I’ve saved this video to my watch later list, and I’ll let you know what I think about it when I do.
👍
the ones staying out of it
If you would not have called Rhodesia or Apartheid South Africa the good guys then you should not consider Israel to be the good guys either.
I don’t think a lot of westerners realize how highly propagandized and pro-colonialist their media is.
The US deemed the African National Congress (ANC, the main group resisting apartheid south africa) a terrorist group just like they do hamas now, and only removed Mandela from the US terrorist watchlist in 2008.
US media is saying all the same things about Palestine’s resistance that they did in the 80s w/ to south african apartheid.
It’s also worth noting that Mandela founded the ANC’s guerilla branch. Western media today portrays him as a purely non-violent, MLK-like figure, but in reality he was central to the ANC’s decision to begin an armed struggle against apartheid.
It’s almost as if:
During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it.
The amount of bias, propaganda, and straight-up misinformation from western media regarding this “conflict” (more like massacre) is truly outrageous.
I don’t have any inherent support either side, and there’s too much history along with bias, propaganda, and outright misinformation to make a determination of who the “good guys” are, if anyone.
However, in such cases I will support the underdog on the principle that you don’t really want one side to have too much power over the other. That’s how we end up with things like ethnic cleansing and genocide. If Palestine (and Lebanon) had powerful militaries, you wouldn’t be seeing the mass devastation and huge loss of civilian lives. I’d prefer to see the sides more balanced so that they can keep each other in check.
Another angle to consider is that I consider the state of Israel to be actively harmful to Americans on the basis of:
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using our tax dollars to commit mass murder against civilians, including a staggering death toll for children
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infiltrating our government, interfering with our elections, and having an undue level of influence on American policy
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corollary to the preceding point: they support getting Trump back into the White House
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training American law enforcement, who then use their oppressive tactics on Americans
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similarly, technology they develop for surveillance and other means of control being used on Americans
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directly attacking our First Amendment rights
Bottom line is I’d say everyone sucks, but in different ways. But I am anti-Israel on the basis of them being way out of control (and without anyone to keep them in check) and due to the threat they pose to the American public.
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Don’t forget that Israel’s government also has explicitly said it wants to ethnically cleanse and genocide the Palestinians, on multiple occassions. It also isn’t democratic, considering there quite literally is a case of apartheid state.
I’m happy they are a “democracy”, but they need to actually live up to the word instead of the former victim becoming the perpetrator themselves.
I doubt most Palestinians actually support the terror attack. If they do, they probably want revenge for the Nakba in 1948, in where Israel has systematically expulsed and cleansed Palestinians from their native soil.
Not that it solves anything, but it’s hard to feel sympathy and anger to both, when it is overall a tragedy that only has one true solution:
Both sides living in peace, equal among kin, with no animosity, with no fascist Israeli government, with no calls to genocide from either side.
There certainly is a good guy and it’s called the citizens who just don’t want their governments to be shit, and to cooperate instead. The citizens who want to return to their country. The citizens that don’t settle. The citizens that want loved ones back, but don’t call for murder. Those are your good guys: normal people, who do not contribute to hatred.
I think there certainly is a solution. The question is whether the US actually has the balls to put multiple warships near the fascist Israel government and Hamas’ repression and credibly threaten both sides (with actual consequences following if neither listens), unless if the former retreats from all settlements and actually contributes to cooperation with the right to return and full citizenship, and the latter releases the prisoners alive and well, and agrees to cooperate as well.
This, all while guaranteeing the right of queers to be enshrined, the seculars to actually have secular marriages, the religious to cooperate and build an interfaith communion.
Hatred needs to be exterminated. If fascists and dictatorships do not listen (they never do), they need to be fought on all fronts.
If they do, they probably want revenge for the Nakba in 1948, in where Israel has systematically expulsed and cleansed Palestinians from their native soil.
The Nakba was really bad and heavily shapes modern Palestinian consciousness, but nobody is seeking revenge for the Nakba itself anymore. It’s more about retaliating against much more recent and current offenses, mainly the Gaza blockade and settlements, resisting Israeli occupation and freeing Palestinian detainees.
I can see that, yeah
They used the population of the Gazastrip as human shields, building there bases in the City sometimes near hospitals. Using human shields is a war crime.
Correction: Israel claims they used (and still use) human shields. Those claims have not been proven in any way. You’ll say they build their military bases and headquarters in cities, but literally every military in the world does that.
Hamas doesn’t want a two state solution,
Look up the 2008 and 2012 ceasefires. Hamas isn’t fundamentally opposed to a two-state solution. It’s not their preferred result, but they’ve taken part in serious peace deals more than once only for Israel to destroy the whole thing.
Israel is using Palestinians as human shield. How do you expect Hamas to not be in civilians area in a highly populated 365 square kilometers area? Do you expect Hamas to kill themselves or to let Israel occupy land with no resistance at all? By resistance, I don’t mean things like 7 of October but something like attacking military target
The good guys are aid workers and Palestinian and Israeli civilians who do not like the conflict.
Can you please show me a single protest of an Israeli citizen against the war specifically because of the genocide?
Asked n’ answered hahaha
💯 this. The people doing the kidnapping, murdering, and genocide are the bad guys. The people trying to help are the good guys.
The people violently resisting a genocide are also good guys.
If someone is trying to kill you and everyone who looks like you, shooting back is good.
Shooting back is not only good, but necessary for survival.
Folks throughout these threads would’ve been wringing their hands over occupier civilians killed in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, acting like they just can’t tell who’s right or wrong.
About the Warsaw Uprising, I thought the targets were purely German military, so while a close analogy to how Hamas framed their action, it’s not exact.
The Warsaw Uprising was an open air prison/ghetto break with a wide number of participants, both organized and not. Those facing violence by the people seeking to fight their genociders were not just those in the military. It was anyone in the way or supporting them, per individuals’ wonts.
In addition, Hamas et al (Hamas was not the only organized group participating 10/7) did also focus on military targets while also taking hostages from a wider set. It is important to note that kibbutzim, little settler colonies, are often militarized and fired on them and others.
What sources do you have on German civilian casualties during the Warsaw Uprising?
Direct accounts. Here is one.
https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Holocaust/warsaw-uprising.html
Where are you getting news, and how often?
You should look into the history of WHY Hamas formed in the first place. Palestinians have been forcibly relocated and had their land taken since the 40’s. I will say, is there any justification for the destruction and genocide Israel is committing? They’ve destroyed practically ALL infrastructure in Gaza including hospitals, they’ve got snipers shooting kids, targeting UN aid workers. Hamas and hostages are convenient excuses for them to keep doing what they started in the 40’s - killing an entire native population and taking their land.
Hamas are still not the good guys. Every time the conflict calms down, Hamas approval sinks because of their absolute unwillingness to fuck all for their own populace. Most of the money supplied to the gaza strips admin goes into weapons, not into infrastructure for their people.
And to answer your question: ah, fuck no. Israels rightwing shitheads are responsible for never letting the cycle of violence rest. Its to profitable for them.
Palestine / Hamas.
Identify good and bad based on what people do. Not why they are doing it. Otherwise you’re simply agreeing that the ends justify the means.
Someone kills a noncombatant? Bad. Doesn’t matter why.
By that logic every single fight has been between bad guys. Abolitionists vs. slavers? Sorry buddy, they both killed noncombatants, they’re both just bad guys. Nazis doing genocide vs. partisabs? Sorry buddy, they’re both just bad guys.
There are no perfect fights, perfect armies, perfect struggles for liberation. You will have to accept what it takes to fight oppression or force yourself to a mealy-mouthed sidelines from which you declare everyone that isn’t passive is always a villain.
I think I generally agree with your viewpoint here. This seems to be separate from the original conversation, and more about whether or not war is sometimes necessary, and if it is then you’ve got to step back and look at the larger picture and realize there’s going to be a lot of pain on both sides, the good side and the bad side. I think it’s ok to empathize with that, but probably not ok to say that fighting is never necessary. The same people will then go on to say it’s ok to physically assault modern day Nazis.
I wouldn’t mind punching a Nazi personally. But I also realize war sometimes is necessary, and that it will be a painful process.
Hell yeah normalize punching Nazis. Of course do so when you won’t lose the fight.
Oppressed people are not generally warmongers. They are not whipped up into a frenzy of domination like Americans, Germans, or Nazis. Instead, they fight because they must either flee or resist, and they opt to resist.
One example is that for all the hand-wringing about Hamas, Israel is clearly far more bloodthirsty and accepting of civilian deaths, given how much they target children and hospitals. All the tut-tutting of Hamas comes from pro-Israeli propaganda that hopes the audience will forget these things and instead think about how much more “pure” the resistance should allegedly be. It is directed at those who reside in countries materially abettibg the occupation and genocide so that they do not demand better.
Not necessarily. If that were the case, then peaceful civil rights movements wouldn’t be effective. We can point to things like women’s right to vote to indicate that isn’t the case though. While they’re not as dramatic, peaceful reform movements have a reasonably high success rate, contrasted against all the uprisings and revolts which have been mercilessly crushed throughout history.
Your entire logic is that a side that kills a noncombatant it is bad. This simplistic logic would, necessarily, lead to the absurdities I listed.
Re: the Civil rights movements, they were not, overall, peaceful. There has been a whitewashing of them due to the (decades later) popularity of Dr. King and his compatriots, but the civil right movement spanned decades and included violent resistance.
While they’re not as dramatic, peaceful reform movements have a reasonably high success rate, contrasted against all the uprisings and revolts which have been mercilessly crushed throughout history.
They have nearly always failed and have instead been used to demonstrate the necessity of armed resistance. You’ll note that Dr. King was killed when he focused on what he viewed as the more encompassing injustice of poverty imposed on black people by capitalism.
Well, yes, killing a noncombatant is bad, no question about it. There are other ways to accomplish the goal, from peaceful ways to simply killing actual combatants instead. I know you’re more of a revolutionary, so that kinda undermines your whole thing, but oh well.
Sure, but things like the riots, particularly around race, contributed to a great deal of backlash, and were not exactly the cause of things like the Civil Rights Act. In fact, I’d challenge you to provide historical cases of a leader caving to that sort of violence while they still had their military and police forces to protect them.
Yes, martyrdom is common, assassination is unquestionably a thing that happens in history. If you’re saying his assassination was some conspiracy to preserve capitalism I’d like to see some actual evidence of that, though, from a respected historian.
Almost always fails, though? It’s relatively rarely attempted in any seriousness, but let’s see… Vietnam War, Women’s Suffrage, Civil Rights Act, Prohibition, and that’s just examples from my country. And yes, I know, they were not all exclusively perfectly peaceful. Majority peaceful, though, I don’t think you can logically just unilaterally declare all the positive results were due to the violent aspects, that makes no sense unless you can provide some evidence.
Well, yes, killing a noncombatant is bad, no question about it.
I think there are plenty of “noncombatants” that can be killed without it being bad. How about concentration camp guards? Or the wardens? How about a President guilty of war crimes and genocide? What about the person that shuts off the water supply to a vulnerable population, killing thousands? I will shed no tears for those people if those they oppressed rise up against them with decisive violence.
Or for one more controversial: what level of violence is acceptable against settlers? Their comfort and security on stolen land is the material basis for the settler project. Making them unsafe undermines this more thoroughly than most other violence. Several groups of native Americans recognized this while their people were genocided and it did have the intended impact right up until the genocidal US government deployed overwhelming forces. When the oppressor seeks genocide, what should really be off-limits? Why the tut-tutting of the oppressed when they face such inhumanity and existential threats?
There are other ways to accomplish the goal, from peaceful ways to simply killing actual combatants instead.
If there is a peaceful way, the Palestinians have already tried it. They tried it in a very obvious way just a few years ago with the Great March of Return. Did it work? What did Israel do in response? What impact did this have on the freedom fighters in the resistance?
Why are you trying to dictate the terms of others’ freedom when they face genocide and occupation? Does your country materially support the occupation? Focus on disrupting that instead.
I know you’re more of a revolutionary, so that kinda undermines your whole thing, but oh well.
Generally speaking it is a bad idea for liberals to guess what socialists want or think. I have yet to meet one that has guessed correctly with any consistency.
Sure, but things like the riots, particularly around race, contributed to a great deal of backlash, and were not exactly the cause of things like the Civil Rights Act.
First, peaceful marches got very similar backlash. Dr. King was criticized with the exact same milquetoast, “we agree with his ideas but not his methods” treatment by liberals and he was majority unpopular among white people for his entire life.
Second, violent actions, as defined by critics, formed the basis for much of the civil rights fight and forwarded it. The seizure and destruction of property, the vigilante justice against lynchers, the hounding of segregationist bosses, and riots were all highly influential. Thr best-organized groups carried rifles. Dr. King has been appropriated by liberals, particularly white liberals, in order to tell an ahistorical story about the importance of nonviooent resistance, that liberty can have its cake and eat it too, to be free of the blrmish of violence while securing its goals. Of course, they tend to stop telling the story when King began to focus on capitalism and its use of structural marginalization to induce poverty on black people and was killed shortly after. Nobody can seriously argue that the civil rights movement simply succeeded, no one can go to the black ghettos and say this with a straight face. It was mollified with partial legalization reforms while the major engine of oppression chugged right along, ensuring continued racialized poverty, policing, and society at large.
In fact, I’d challenge you to provide historical cases of a leader caving to that sort of violence while they still had their military and police forces to protect them.
Every revolution and, most closely ties to the topic of this post, the victory of the ANC guerillas over the apartheid South African government.
Yes, martyrdom is common, assassination is unquestionably a thing that happens in history. If you’re saying his assassination was some conspiracy to preserve capitalism I’d like to see some actual evidence of that, though, from a respected historian.
It is well-known that black civil rights leaders were frequently assassinated and that the FBI led the charge in harassing and threatening them and certainly did not stop at Dr. King. Fred Hampton is a well-known example. Though government employees were hardly the only ones killing and they often worked with civilian assets or simply sat back and let white supremacists do the job. The interest of the state in doing so was to undermine the civil rights movement itself and to wrap it up in its red scare tactics, both in the service of capitalism, namely racialized capitalism. Though it is not only the state with such interests - businesses, particularly those owned by racist whites, have every incentive to support these violences, and had often been the sponsors of lynchings.
Re: Dr. King specifically, his family has always maintained that he was killed in a conspiratorial manner. There is doubt about this narrative, but it is useful to follow the logic and constellation of government infiltrators of King’s organization and connections to organized crime. But even withiut that, the original confession of the officially accused and convicted was by someone looking to get paid a racist bounty that had been placed on King’s head.
Almost always fails, though? It’s relatively rarely attempted in any seriousness, but let’s see… Vietnam War
Was ended primarily by the Vietnamese, namely by North Vietnam and the Viet Cong. The US domestic side, which was not entirely nonviolent, just limited the capacity to wage war and was dramatically secondary.
Women’s Suffrage
Notoriously involved violence.
Civil Rights Act
Already discussed. Incomplete and not separable from violent struggle.
Prohibition
Which part of it? Teatotalers were often violent leading up to it and the period of prohibition was characterized by violent organized crime. Prohibition was itself ended mostly because capitalists wanted to make money legally again and to crowd out the mob. The primary sponsors of repealing prohibition were the Rockefelllers and du Pont brothers, including various “grassroots” organizations. The whole thingis hardly a peaceful people’s campaign against an oppressor.
A concentration camp guard is a combatant. They are armed and keeping you there with violence, right? Responding with violence to violence is pretty widely regarded as acceptable, outside of pacifist movements. Your more controversial question is what we’re really talking about. I think your focus on the “material basis” for their actions is where this goes wrong, as it ignores their ideology, their psychology. This is why such resistance movements fail, humans are not fundamentally logical. Even a total undermining of their peace and security simply draws that overwhelming response you mentioned, as we are seeing evidence of right now. While the nonviolent methods were not working very well, they were working better than this. What works is what’s most important, that’s why I’m dictating right and wrong to others quest for freedom. Even a full cutoff of all foreign weapons to Israel would not resolve the famine.
Any actual sourcing for this primacy of violence in peaceful protest movements or King’s assassination being to preserve capitalism? It seems to me you are simply trying to give all the credit to the few, while ignoring the contributions of the many, because it suits you.
“Every revolution” sure is convenient, when 99% fail. The ANC did not “defeat” South Africa, it was international pressure that ended Apartheid.
On the note of government surveillance and oppression of the civil rights movement, I agree.
Regarding Vietnam, the US could have kept fighting far longer if there was will for it. The reason there was not will for it was domestic opposition.
Again, you’re simply giving all the credit to the violent while ignoring the hard work of the masses in these movements. This is disingenuous.
A concentration camp guard is a combatant. They are armed and keeping you there with violence, right?
Kibbutzim near Gaza are armed occupation groups set up for the long term. Violence against those in kibbutzim are the only credible accusations of violence against “civilians” on Oct 7. Is an open air prison guard less of one when they live nearby? What if they don’t go in the prison but instead are there to shoot you if you break out? What if they knowingly live on your stolen land while you live in a ghetto?
Responding with violence to violence is pretty widely regarded as acceptable, outside of pacifist movements. Your more controversial question is what we’re really talking about. I think your focus on the “material basis” for their actions is where this goes wrong, as it ignores their ideology, their psychology. This is why such resistance movements fail, humans are not fundamentally logical.
That’s a lot of unjustified generalizations when we are talking about something specific.
Even a total undermining of their peace and security simply draws that overwhelming response you mentioned, as we are seeing evidence of right now.
And Israel is now likely the weakest it has ever been while the world has awoken to their crimes. A slow genocide is not better than a fast one, but actions one that draws the genocider into an existential crisis have strategic value.
While the nonviolent methods were not working very well, they were working better than this.
You are being vague again. Working well for what? What is the goal? What outcomes are on the table? Nonviolent methods achieved one thing: a recognition that they could not achieve their intended purpose of inciting international support for their cause and that the Zionist entity will not even tolerate peaceful marches, so militarized resistance is necessary. I would bet you did jack shit in response to the Great March of Return, whereas this at least has your attention.
What works is what’s most important, that’s why I’m dictating right and wrong to others quest for freedom. Even a full cutoff of all foreign weapons to Israel would not resolve the famine.
Yes it would because the blockade would collapse and so would the ability to target aid workers.
Any actual sourcing for this primacy of violence in peaceful protest movements or King’s assassination being to preserve capitalism? It seems to me you are simply trying to give all the credit to the few, while ignoring the contributions of the many, because it suits you.
I have provided enough information for a curious person to inform themselves. I can’t make you curious and I cannot read for you, nor will I be doing errands for you in that regard. You can thank me for giving you this information when you have clearly never made any attempts to learn this topic and continue to be resistant to self-education before sharing your opinions, which are really just the things you see on children’s programming.
“Every revolution” sure is convenient, when 99% fail.
A statistic you pulled from your ass that does not address the fact that I accurately answered your question. Just a deflection. Do you see why I am not taking time to help you with reading materials? You are not acting in good faith.
The ANC did not “defeat” South Africa, it was international pressure that ended Apartheid.
Absolutely incorrect. Boycotts and sanctions helped but it was resistance like the ANC that led the charge and, for example, created the boycott movements in the first place. Rather than acknowledge basic facts you are now just making things up and asserting them to be true. It was black south Africans and their white allies engaging in direct action that brought the country to its knees and agitated for all of this. White South Africa was dependent on black South Afrucan labor.
Regarding Vietnam, the US could have kept fighting far longer if there was will for it. The reason there was not will for it was domestic opposition.
Because the imperialist war crybabies weren’t winning and came home to get sympathy for their PTSD and war crimes. Vietnam set itself up for long-term guerilla warfare that they knew could outlast Americans’ willpower. It is frankly disgusting to give Americans credit for the Vietnamese kicking their shit in. Give credit where credit is due and stop feeding this implicit racism that non-white resistance groups didn’t achieve what they did.
Again, you’re simply giving all the credit to the violent while ignoring the hard work of the masses in these movements.
Giving all credit to, say, the people successfully waging guerilla warfare to tire out their occupiers? In a war? Yes of course I will give them virtually all of the credit, as they did nearly all of the work to efficaciously achieve their desired ends.
You are simply incorrect in your understanding of history and believe in fairy takes that you refuse to question, even when presented with the obvious. You are not in a position to be correctly humble and actually learn this history, presumably because you just want to keep dictating the terms of others’ freedom and wringing your hands like Dr. King’s White moderate.
This is disingenuous.
This is an interesting accusation given your dithering and deflection around clear cut examples.
I can be glad that the Union won the U.S. Civil War and and ended slavery yet still consider it to be war crimes that they deliberately attacked civilians as part of Sherman’s March; no logic had been violated there.
According to OP’s logic that makes The Union bad guys, end of thought.
Okay:
In 1948, just after WWII, the UK decided to carve a chunk out of Palestine and create a new state there, called Israel - as a Jewish homeland that would take all the refugees that the rest of Europe didn’t want to deal with.
Palestine was not happy about this - the land was taken without their consent, a great chunk of their country just taken from them by decree, backed up by a still highly militarized Europe.
Over the following decades, Palestine tried several times to take their country back, and each time got slapped down (since Israel had vast backing from UK/USA/Europe, both from postwar guilt and because Israel had a lot of strategic value as a platform from which to project military power in the middle east).
Cut to today, and Israel has expanded to take virtually the entire area, apart from some tiny scattered patches of land, and the Gaza strip - a strip of land 40km by 10km, containing most of the Palestinian population, blockaded by sea and land by the Israeli military.
Israel also runs an apartheid regime very similar to the old South African one - Palestinians have very few human or civil rights, generally get no protection from the Israeli police or military, while being treated as hostile outsiders that can be assaulted or have their land ‘settled’ at will by Israelis.
It has been decades since Palestine has had any kind of organised military, and it’s also not recognised as its own country by most of the world, so there’s virtually no way for it to push back, or to call on assistance.
In a situation like that, the only recourse is guerilla warfare, which often descends into (and is exploited by bad actors as) terrorist attacks. It’s a damn good way to farm martyrs, and this hugely serves Israel’s ends, since it can keep pointing to terrorim as justification for their ongoing oppression. Israel in fact provided a great deal of ongoing funding for Hamas, while blocking more moderate groups.
Back in October, a small organised group raided across the border from Gaza into Israel, killing about 1200 people and taking a couple of hundred hostages.
In response, Israel has killed over 40,000 Palestinans in Gaza - mainly women and children - systematically destroying the city’s infrastructure, water, power, food production and distribution, hospitals, universities and schools, bombing refugee camps and destroying the majority of all housing and shelter in the area. It’s also bombing humanitarian aid convoys, preventing food and medicine from reaching the people there. The death toll is expected to reach many hundreds of thousands, since people are already starving and there is no medical care available.
The rest of the world is wringing their hands about the ‘regrettable’ loss of life, while continuing to sell Israel all the weapons and bombs it needs to continue the genocide.
Fuck Israel.
Mandatory Palestine was long before 1948. Zionist settlers were doing terrorism on the indigenous Palestinians for decades by 1948. And with British support.
That’s a very polite way to explain Israeli savagery.
In 1948, just after WWII, the UK decided to carve a chunk out of Palestine and create a new state there, called Israel - as a Jewish homeland that would take all the refugees that the rest of Europe didn’t want to deal with
That’s not what happened.
Firstly, the Balfour Declaration was in 1917, during World War I. By 1948, the Jews were already living there, and fighting for the land.
Secondly, Britain never partitioned the land, and never announced any intention to partition the land. (Things might have been very different if they had.) I think you’re getting confused with the UN’s partition plan, which was never implemented.
