Comment by YeGoblynQueenne
1 year ago
The solution to that is to not take sides. International Humanitarian Law doesn't take sides: for example, you can't target civilians, no matter who they are or what they or their homies have done, or who they support or don't support. There's no need to take any side on that.
As I (think I) said in another comment, the strongest possible position one can adopt is the one supported by the facts. The Palestinian issue is so hard because there is an overwhelming amount of facts and only a few people are really in possession of all the facts. That's what skews the debate.
So e.g. when you go on the internet (I mean the-site-formerly-known-as-Twitter) you see a veritable fire hose of facts taken out of context. It's like people, humans, don't have a memory, they can only remember what's been posted on Twitter in the last week or so. The videos of Israel's atrocities circulate freely, but no videos of Hamas' atrocities circulate and even if they did, that was three months ago. So people kind of organically are shunted into one side, or the other, like sheep to slaughter, and there's no way to form an opinion that is really on the side of peace, huanitarian law, and human life.
So the solution is to not take sides and not try to form an opinion, even. Support peace, support IHL, support whoever is not talking about killing people, or taking over land, or waving flags, or saying who's right and who's wrong. In a war, to take sides is to perpetuate the war. To help people find peace we must stop taking sides.
> The solution to that is to not take sides.
Sooner or later, governments (and sometimes even other institutions) have to make binary choices – e.g. whether or not to vote for some UN resolution, whether or not to recognise the State of Palestine, etc. Of course, if one is just a private individual, not one of those leaders, one has the luxury of not choosing.
> for example, you can't target civilians, no matter who they are or what they or their homies have done, or who they support or don't support
You can't tell from footage of the aftermath of an airstrike whether it was illegitimate targeting of civilians or not. A big part of what it was depends on the intentions and knowledge of the military commander ordering the strike, which a video of its aftermath couldn't possibly convey.
> The Palestinian issue is so hard because there is an overwhelming amount of facts and only a few people are really in possession of all the facts
There is also a lot of interpretation of limited evidence – e.g. is event X an isolated incident or the norm? A video on social media can't tell you that. And even if a video is showing accurate footage of an incident, it usually can't convey the broader context of that incident.