Comment by sertbdfgbnfgsd

At least on the Israeli side, this is wrong. An enormous majority of people are convinced that the war is justified. 1200 dead; that would be the equivalent of 40,000 Americans. 240 kidnapped, with 137 still there. Hamas have proven their capabilities and determination. And then they say[1] that they intend to do it again. When someone tells you that they want you annihilated, and intend to attack you, believe them.

[1] https://www.memri.org/tv/hamas-official-ghazi-hamad-we-will-...

> have a wide and diverse set of opinions about Hamas

75% of Palestinians "support the military operation carried out by the Palestinian resistance led by Hamas on October 7th." 76% have positive views of Hamas (other armed terrorist groups have even larger support).

https://www.awrad.org/files/server/polls/polls2023/Public%20...

I don't see how that quote from OP is incompatible with my point, please explain

> They're explicitly stating that they believe pro-palestinian views are prioritized.

I'm also saying that they are prioritised, here is a sentence from my previous comment:

> As a result, certain views are prioritised

Prioritized in what exact way? You are fed what you are interested in and like, on TikTok. It is easy to read yourself of topics or content you are uninterested in or dislike.

> “If anything”

This is an important clause here. It means that they do not believe that pro-Israel views are prioritised but __if__ any it is the case that there are prioritised views are pro-Palestinian views.

Now, you could argue that this is a bad faith rhetorical device but it is not “explicitly stating that they believe pro-Palestinian views are prioritised”.

No, the majority of the world is against Israel's occupation of the West Bank, and until 2005 when Israel left Gaza, its occupation of Gaza.

The October 7th attack was carried out against civilians in their homes living on land that is internationally recognized as Israel by an overwhelming majority of countries.

Last month UN appointed Iran to chair and guide its annual UNHRC (human rights council) meeting.

The aforementioned organization in no way represents “the majority of the world” or “the rest of the world”; it makes a joke out of the values of freedom and human rights.

>The majority of the world is against Israel's occupation of Palestine

The majority of the global ruling class is for Israel's occupation of Palestine.

History is incomprehensible if we ignore class conflict.

> I really struggle to believe anyone beyond a small minority even thought about Palestine or Israel before Oct 7.

It has been a relatively prominent issue in Ireland, and especially Northern Ireland for some time. You can find plenty of images over the years of republican murals with Palestinian flags on them (e.g. 10 years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/PropagandaPosters/comments/189yeg/o... ), or conversely unionist bonfires with palestinean flags on it: (e.g. last year https://nitter.dafriser.be/M_AndersonSF/status/1542523209311... )

As OP pointed out, a billion Muslims is a lot of people. They may not have the palestinians at top of mind all the time, but a lot of them do at the moment.

> I really struggle to believe anyone beyond a small minority even thought about Palestine or Israel before Oct 7.

I grew up in the 1980s and recall intense flareups on this subject matter for as long as I can remember. The arrival of the Web and social media simply amplified them.

> I really struggle to believe anyone beyond a small minority even thought about Palestine or Israel before Oct 7.

This appeared repeatedly as important news, sadly mostly due to wars and terrorism.

Jerusalem relevance alone for multiple religions with its holy sites made it important topic for many.

I think you are underestimating the diversity of these global platforms.

As an example, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are among the top 10 countries in terms of Twitter users.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/242606/number-of-active-...

This conflict has been a huge thing since the 90s. I would argue the vast majority of people in the west had an opinion on that conflict.

I think it's pretty unfair this person is being down voted.

Yes, most Americans knew the conflict existed previous to this past October, but few who weren't Jewish or Muslim and/or Arab (I think most Arab Christians are generally/vaguely pro-Palestinian, but not sure) would have had strong opinions about it or been able to tell you much. I don't think the issue has ever featured this heavily in the US news cycle since oil embargoes in the 70s, and the issue is a lot more contentious now due to a few different factors.

Right now, unless someone consumes zero news media and has very curated social media feeds, I don't see how they could avoid understanding this has all been a major geopolitical event that is continuing to unfold.

> There's no need to protest when people agree with their government.

Yet there's large protests in countries that aren't allied with the US or Israel, when no such protests were forthcoming in other analogous scenarios. And there were scarce protests in the US against Saudi Arabia's campaign in Yemen despite US alliance.

I do agree that your thesis is a partial explanation, but it is far from a full explanation. There's two other things going on.

Among Western leftists and minority groups, Israel is a symbol. It's perceived as the last vestige of Western/White colonialism. A symbol of someone with white skin punching down on brown skinned people. It harkens back to the reason that your ancestor was forced (either literally or by material circumstance) into the US in the first place, and why you are living today under systemic racism. Defeating this placeholder is therefore an important milestone in restoring their sense of historical justice. Needless to say this is oversimplified given how many Israeli Jews are indigenous to I/P or were ethnically cleansed from the surrounding MENA area and forced into the I/P area, but people do legitimately hold that dichotomous oppressor/oppressed worldview.

Among Muslim countries, this is an ethnoreligious blood feud. Assad killing Muslims doesn't cause the same anger because it's within the same identity group. So it's a classic case of identity divisions leading to disparate anger. I'm massively oversimplifying here, there are many other factors, but it's part of what's behind the energy.

Settlements are of course wrong, but I don't really see any concrete action that Israel could take other than removing settlements. Even if they did that the fundamental facts on the ground wouldn't change. I don't see how they lift the blockade and any 2 state solution seems a nonstarter.

I listened to one guy fresh off the boat from Korea who would not hear a good word about Israel. Absolutely refused to hear any nuance or mitigation. His reason? Because his country had been invaded and occupied by Japan and his homomorph was Japan=Israel and Palestine=Korea.

> [3] In America we still use "gypsy", which is terribly offensive in Europe

Is it? In Spain we still call them "gitanos", heck, they even call themselves that: https://www.gitanos.org/

That's just untrue. Sudan, Yemen and (earlier) Ethiopia had much much more, without even going into Ukraine (nobody should accept the Russian figures) or Syria (death toll exceeding all Israeli-Arab wars combined). Doing a death toll per month analysis is misleading because high intensity can't last very long due to geography alone.

20k deaths includes Hamas militants. So far the militant to civilian casualty ratio is actually lower than most other modern urban conflicts. Some being as high as 10 civilians for every 1 militant death.

> 20k deaths in just two months is a massive death toll for such a short conflict.

This is the number provided by Hamas. Per Israel, 15k people have been killed, approximately 10k of whom are civilians.

> For comparison, it's more than the civilian death toll in the nearly 2-year-old war in Ukraine.

This is according to numbers sourced from Russians. According to Ukrainians, >20k civilians died in Mariupol’ alone (a city 1/5th the size of Gaza).

> There's a literal wall around 2M ppl with little agency, while most of them are refugees from the other side of the wall.

There is a really very simple solution for them to have all of the dignity, agency, independence, prosperity, peace, sovereignty, stability to raise children, etc that you and I want for the Palestinian people. They only have to - and hear me out - not kill Jews. It really is that simple. Don't kill Jews, not by rockets, nor suicide bomb, nor stabbing attacks, nor stealth attacks by terror tunnels, nor any of the varied and creative ways that Jews have been attacked in the region for more than a century.

Most people think that Free Palestine means independence and sovereignty. It does not. Sovereignty has been proffered many times in the last 75 years. So given that it decidedly does not mean what we Westerners expect it means when we hear Free Somewhere - "Free Tibet" "Free Donbas" or whatever - I would like my fellow Westerners to really meditate on the meaning of the term "free" in "Free Palestine". Really ruminate on what possible meaning that can have.

Then, when you are really ready to hear what it means, read the Hamas charter. Or read about the writings, life and times of al-Husseini, the architect and sire of the Free Palestine movement.

We Westerners, especially we Americans, really impose our own views on others. Let Palestinians speak for themselves. They are very clear what Free Palestine means. We just have to listen without preconception.

Gaza has been pseudo self governed since 2005, and is ruled by an authoritarian theocratic regime. The situation was intolerable on 10/6 but understood. What exactly should israel do after the 10/7 attacks. To me attempting to degrade Hamas is what any other state would do. War in one of the most densely populated places on earth is going to kill a lot of people. The only other option it would seem to me would be to ignore the attacks which I'm sure wouldn't be acceptable to the citizens of Israel.

The wall wasn’t always there. Just like how the wall trump put between US and Mexico wasn’t always there. Actions have consequences and the West Bank situation regressed from continued suicide bombing and terrorist attackers.

Nelson Mandela has spoken out on the brutal oppression of the Palestinians by Israel[1]. His words are powerful, and worth reading.

> To methis is one of the most abohorrent conflicts in earth in this day and age.

He agrees with you.

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/9/26/gaza-and-the-cr...

Gaza borders Egypt and the West Bank borders Jordan.

If they are blockaded by the country that they cant get along with then it is at least partially on Egypt and Jordan that they are given no way out.

This comes off as ignorant of events happening elsewhere.

Approximately 600,000 people died in the Tigray conflict in Ethiopia in the two years from November 2020 to November 2022. 40% of the Ethiopian population is children.

The Yemeni civil war (2016-present) had killed at least 377,000 people, as of two years ago. By now, many more than that.

There are mass graves in Mali and Sudan where hundreds of bodies are just piled up on top of each other, visible from space, thanks to collaboration between Wagner Group and the local regime.

Syria is bombing their own population once again at this very moment, in continuation of their 10 year civil war which has killed at least 300,000. Notably, many, many images from the Syrian civil war have been recycled as supposed footage from Gaza (https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/12/08/images-of-syrian-...) for propaganda purposes - not that there isn't plenty of legitimate horrible footage from Gaza too.

South Sudan, Libya, Myanmar, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, Ukraine/Russia

There is no end to this confit regardless. It will go on as you have 2 groups with claims on the same land. Wars are won when the loser accepts defeat I don't see that ever happening. There have been multiple attempts at a negotiated solution like the Peel commision, the 1948 UN partition, or the oslo accords. All have been rejected.

> Believing that such acts will end Hamas/terror is profoundly delusional.

This is the apocryphal "pounding them into submission" (or, "display of overwhelming force"). The idea is to break them, and discourage them from thinking to ever try something like this again.

Problem is, you need to make sure they had anything to do with it in the first place. If someone launches a false flag op, you're being trolled into committing genocide against civilians.

I fear they're being played but they've become a schizophrenic dealing with their demons via Howitzer. Paranoia is easily exploited.

> In my social circles, the conversation about injustice in Palestine is over a decade old.

Indeed, I would say that anyone older than 10 has participated in such conversations. The person you're responding to makes it sound like it's a new thing.

This has zero to do with "western ruling class"

This is about authoritarians starting and driving a global war on democracy. Russia => Iran => Qatar =>Hamas. Why do you think Hamas leaders and Iranian leaders met in Moscow in mid-October? Gaza is opening a 2nd front on the Ukranian war. Putin & Russian officials have repeatedly stated that they think it is their right to rule at least the entire Soviet and Iron Curtain territory. Russian media is openly cheering the Republicans for blocking Ukraine aid.

But you can go right on believing the shrill propaganda, as if Hamas was some kind of organic protest movement (they are not, they are terrorist occupiers of Palestine). Just be sure you enjoy it when you no longer have a vote that counts after autocrats take over in your country, as they already have in Iran, Gaza, Hungary, etc.

To understand today you need thousands of years of history, both to understand where the Palestinian people came from (other empires moving them around) as well as the Israeli claims of nativism. Then layer on larger subtexts of the history of Jews and genocide/persecution, the refusal of refugees during WWII, the losing side of the Arabs in WWII, the roles of France/UK in the Middle East, on top of the roles of the Egyptians/Jordanians/Ottoman Empire, Roman Empire, etc etc etc etc etc etc.

I seriously doubt these videos are actually “in depth” in the require way if they simply start 70 years. I’ve also seen many videos myself and there’s zero depth and pure one sidedness, much of the pro-Palestinian content predicated on a dismissal of Zionism as racist but hypocritically an acceptance of all other 1st nation claims as well as the tactic acceptance of Hamas with its theocratic & genocidal goals.

The "outrage of the week" is attention going to a current event. Our attention and hours are limited so for the majority you choose what's top of mind. There are 1000s of things we should all be addressing collectively but the conflict du jour usually wins our attention.

In my country (US) we've had ~200k deaths from opioid prescriptions. It gets attention but it's really not enough when the perpetrators should be in prison for life.

None of this is a good thing but "outrage of the week" is simply attention and attention span. We're all limited.

China has allowed a huge amount of anti-semitism to surge on its social networks and media recently. They are not coming from an Abrahamic religion. It’s more than that.

Meanwhile the Islamic world has ok’d (in the UN and other forums) China to literally create concentration camps to sterilize and erase the Uygur culture and Islamic religion.

Things are not so straightforward.

I've long time stopped believing its about religion. Yes, religion is used as greese to get groups of people to "side". But the underlying reasons are --as always-- material.

You think the "red scare" was actually about the commies attacking? No, it was about limiting an alternative economic system == resource control.

There’s plenty of video of what’s happening in Yemen. I’m sure there’s video out there in Sudan, and many other places as well. The world just cares a whole lot less.