Comment by catlover76
2 years ago
Almost everything you're saying about them is pretty visibly applicable to your attitude towards them. I don't see much of a difference between a Palestinian or Muslim who isn't sorry Israelis were killed on Oct 7th or who believes that's a valid form of nationalist insurgency or retaliation, and a Jew or an Israeli who supports the IDF's current campaign.
I think most of us without direct skin in the game have the basic moral sense to fail to find the kind of incredibly biased take you're offering here particularly convincing, and to greet with skepticism the notion that the side which has had the upper hand for longer than most of us have been alive is purely a victim.
If a Palestinian person came on trying to say "well the people in Gaza are so oppressed, they had no choice..." I would roll my eyes at that too. That they would lash out violently is understandable, but it's not their only choice, and it doesn't make it morally acceptable. You guys are more alike than you realize, and I don't mean that in a "kumbaya brotherhood" good kind of way.
> I also want my family in Israel to be safe, I don't go marching in the streets calling for all Palestinians to be expelled from the region or killed.
You don't have to. It's been happening, and has just been accelerated.
I'm sorry that you can't see the difference. What does "Muslim" have to do with this by the way? Why is it the the group of Muslims as a whole is taking a position here? According to you anyways.
Ofcourse I'm biased but so are you. I'm struggling to follow your logic. If the Allies had the upper hand against the Nazis does it make the Nazis the victim? If the west had the upper hand against the Soviet block is Russia the victim? What does that have to do with anything.
"That they would lash out violently is understandable," no it's not. You're just taking the "people in Gaza are oppressed" (by Israel) at face value. It's just a false statement. Even if it was true then Oct 7th is not justified. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and the course the Palestinians took from that point was mainly their own.
All Palestinians are not being killed or expelled from the region. That is an indisputable fact as of this time. But it's also got nothing to do with my argument. Supporters of Israel aren't marching in the streets calling for this but supporters of Palestinians are marching in the streets calling for the destruction of Israel. (EDIT: and this was true earlier in the war as well, as soon as Israel responded, when there were still many more Israeli dead and more damage than on the Palestinian side)
The only thing I will agree with you is that Israel does have choices. And their choices can be criticized. Israel acts to protect its citizens and that's an important context. If your starting point is that Israel should be destroyed and all its citizens be killed then naturally no choice Israel makes is going to be acceptable to you.
EDIT: I just want to add here that while I am biased about this conflict I think I am applying the same measures and principles that I apply when I look at other conflicts where I am not directly and emotionally involved. Ofcourse I have some biases for those as well. So when I look e.g. at the wars the US or NATO engaged at, or when I look at the Russia-Ukraine war, or I look at any other war that happened in my lifetime, I try to apply some objective measures. If we look at how countries wage wars we can look at their practices. For example, we can look at Russia's practices at Mariupol. Or we can look at practices in the battle of Mosul. and we can compare them to IDF practices. Or we can look at practices in the Syrian civil war. Or we can look at WW-I or WW-II. How do we know if Ukraine is right or Russia is right? How can we tell which side is fighting more "morally". We need a benchmark. What we have here is a war between Gaza and Israel. We don't say Ukraine's war with Putin. We say Ukraine's war with Russia. When the US went to war in Afghanistan it was likewise not the US vs. Al Qaeda, it was the US vs. Afghanistan. If we want to take the bias out we need to be able to benchmark things and make them comparable. Whenever I try to set some benchmark (for example what are protestors calling for) there's always some maneuver to try and get away from a benchmark to emotions and opinions. I'm open to figure out other ways of "discovering" the unbiased truths here as much as that exists. We have facts and we have the interpretation of these facts. In most discourse on this topic the facts/truth are distorted and benchmarking/interpreting this facts is not an interest.