Comment by azinman2
2 years ago
And where do you think that comes from? Some coherent well researched culturally deep understanding of history and the current status of things by the entire population? Of course not, it’s propaganda. There are ethnic conflicts worldwide that often have more bloodshed, many occurring simultaneously right now, but this gets all the rhetoric and attention.
If you watch some of the content in question you’ll see that it actually is often in-depth analysis of history done by younger people. I’ve seen many clips discussing Nakba and the right of return for instance.
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.
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This explains my gripe with most of the messaging on socials (I came across at least) . You see accounts who never cared to post anything of this conflict suddenly being outraged and reposting stuff. It’s not that they should not care, but it’s a “outrage of the week” sort of thing, and as you say, often with nothing of the careful history and understanding.
For sure it’s a tragedy.
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.
I think you're overlooking the fact that it's located in an area that has religious significance for Jews, Christians, and Muslims, which most other conflicts don't. Hundreds of millions of people believe in the idea of a supreme deity who takes a close personal interest in this specific part of the world.
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.
The actual conflict on the ground is about territory and resources. But lots of other people are interested because they were raised to believe that events happening in 'the holy land' thousands of years ago have deep, ongoing, and eternal significance for them as individuals. That's why a great many people care about this that would not care about similarly bloody conflicts in other countries, even nearby ones (eg Kurdistan or the Syrian civil war).
I don't adhere to an Abrahamic religion and frankly dislike monotheism on general principle. But while I don't believe in any of this, it's a fact that huge numbers of people do for different reasons. For example US Evangelicals are obsessed with events in Israel because many of them consider conflict there to be the harbinger of the Apocalypse prophesied in the Book of Revelation. The principal military and political actors in this conflict may be privately secularist or only nominally religious, but they're quite willing to leverage religion for financial and political capital.
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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.
maybe because the scale isn't even close? Crazy idea I know.
> There are ethnic conflicts worldwide that often have more bloodshed, many occurring simultaneously right now, but this gets all the rhetoric and attention.
That's funny, because you sound like the kind of person who says the same about every conflict.