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This is not a huge mystery. If you're a left-leaning zoomer, you've spent most of your adult life watching right-wing Israeli governments take advantage of the US government to commit human rights violations while aggressively snubbing the Democrats and boosting the Republicans. You can invoke the history of the conflict or the gruesome spectre of a Hamas victory all you like, but you're contrasting ancient history* and lurid hypotheticals to current reality. If Israel had pursued a measured response to the Oct. 7th attacks (and especially if they weren't also constantly nibbling away at Palestinian territory), they would have been able to garner a lot of sympathy. Not from everyone - there are indeed people who think Israel can do no right - but from most. After all, it seemed like a vindication of the aforementioned lurid hypotheticals. Israel, however, does not do measured responses. And if the IDF's conduct isn't quite the war of annihilation their most vocal critics claim, it's still increasingly hard to argue that Israel isn't waging a war against the Palestinian people rather than simply going after Islamic terrorists.
Even if you're not left-leaning or otherwise sympathetic to the Palestinians, it's easy to feel like this is an incredibly one-sided relationship.
*which is not always especially favorable to the Israelis in any event.
Yeah, zoomers are brainrotted with tiktok slop and think the genocidal jihadis are oppressed. It's not a mystery, it's just a grim reminder we should have banned tiktok ages ago.
I think it's very possible for them to be both genocidal and oppressed. I also think being genocidal has made them oppressed, and being oppressed guarantees they stay genocidal.
To pre-empt "you're a bleeding heart lefty", if I were dictator of my country, I would absolutely ensure a Palestinian refugee diaspora did not form in my country. This does not go well for the hosts typically.
However, half the Gaza strip is under the age of ~20. They've grown up living lives of poverty in a ""country"" that you can walk end to end in about 8 hours, and it's not easy to leave. I'm sure they grow up hearing stories of friends/family/neighbors who've lost loved ones, been injured, or lost their homes to isreali strikes.
If you or I were born there, we'd hate Jews too. I have a very hard time holding teenagers accountable for the beliefs they were born into.
If I were designing an environment to incubate terrorists I don't think I could do much better than the Gaza strip, it's basically a terrorist factory.
I'm pretty black pilled on the whole situation. I think both sides are too deep and too stubborn to ever resolve it. I think they deserve each other.
I don't think you're a bleeding heart lefty. But I do think this sentimentality is actively worse for the long-term health of the region than my lack of it. So, yes, I'd suggest being less of a bleeding heart. The world is unfair. It sucks the Palestinians grew up in these conditions. It sucks the world broke them.
But they are broken. Israel can coexist in a way they can't.
I'm not sure if I'm sentimental, I just have a hard time feeling mad at them. I also have a preference for less human suffering in the world.
It's like having trashy neighbors who loudly fight and domestic each other. I get why they're both hurt, but I'm not going over there to facilitate couples' counseling. They can spend the rest of their lives making each other miserable if they want. I'd prefer they made up so I didn't have to hear it, but it's not that annoying.
Part of me wonders if everyone would have been better off if the Isreali's had just ripped the band aid off back in the day and just straight pushed them out/completed the ethnic cleansing. The displaced Palestinians would still be salty, but they'd be a few generations into moving on by now, and they'd probably get bombed way less.
I will in fact explicitly state my belief that ethnic cleansing ~80 years ago was the most moral option, and would have led to an integrated Palestinian cultural remnant by now that's been broken up and assimilated into all the other regions -- including Israel itself. Instead, the world's accepted that Palestine is never going anywhere, but also accepted that Palestine will never stop trying to refight the conflicts it continually loses.
You break the country and the people decisively, and you relocate the survivors, and a few generations later you have a rough peace. Otherwise, you let every single generation re-radicalize and commit gradual violent suicide against Israel (and whatever Muslim neighbors offend them that day).
I'm not sure what aspect of horseshoe theory is at play here, but I never thought this would be the topic that we both agreed on
I don't much believe in horseshoe theory, anyway. I think people are far too quick to say "oh, so you don't like the status quo? Then you're just like all these people who don't!"
There's actually a huge gulf between what the "horseshoe's ends" think, believe, and want, and tying them together is actively detrimental to understanding their motives.
While your nuanced take is true, this is a funny video
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ev373c7wSRg?si=EWKK5Cw82726FSWC
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