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Comment by woeh

6 hours ago

The biggest difference is "our" role in it. For western countries, the economic and diplomatic relations with e.g. Israel is a lot stronger than with Iran. It makes much more sense to speak up if you feel your country or one of their allies does something you disagree with.

That is only pragmatic, right? Speaking up might actually change things by putting these relations at stake. For Iran, there might not be much left to do from a western perspective except military involvement. Starting another war is not something a Greta led flotilla might want to do.

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woeh

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apical_dendrite  6 hours ago

I think this is something that a lot of supporters of the Gaza protests tell themselves, but I am not sure that it's actually true. The US and other Western countries sell weapons to Saudi Arabia and have extensive economic ties to that country. Saudi Arabia recently engaged in a bombing campaign in Yemen that looked very similar to Israel's campaign in Gaza. And yet there were no protests. Also, you can influence your country's policies towards another country whether or not the two countries are allies. Years ago, there was a mass protest movement in the west against the genocide in Darfur for example. Nobody said "we don't have a lot of economic or diplomatic ties to Sudan so there's no point in protesting".

I think the real reason has to do with 1) there was an existing, organized pro-Palestinian movement that had experience protesting; 2) many organizations on the left saw the Israel-Gaza conflict as fitting very nicely into their larger anti-imperialist ideology in a way that other conflicts don't; 3) everyone more-or-less knows where Israel is on the map and has some familiarity with it; 4) there were a lot of really shocking images and video from Gaza

  • woeh  6 hours ago

    Fair enough, I did not know that. Maybe add to your list of reasons that attention is divided over so many conflicts nowadays. Probably there have been conflicts all the time, but with Ukraine, Greenland, Minnesota, Gaza and Venezuela getting a lot of attention it feels like a lot. Note that I don't think the conflicts are remotely comparable with each other, but they each take up a lot of mindspace at least for me.