naraburns nihil supernum
7mo ago
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
Is anyone else here pretty shocked by many on the Left's support of Hamas after these attacks? I'm not talking Biden type people on the Left, but DSA type leftists who support "The Squad". They are more or less saying that Israel deserved this. I really don't understand how you can see a bunch of men slaughter innocent civilians at a music festival, kill innocent civilians just going about their day, capture women and children as hostages, and parade dead bodies around on trucks and upload it to social media and not have sympathy for Israelis. Yet these people are more or less saying Israel deserved this and the real victims of this will be Palestine.
I don't think this is a strawman either. If you go on reddit or Twitter you will see this sentiment. I guess this is the inevitable outcome of the oppressor/oppressed decolonize framework so many of them have adopted. This is pretty blackpilling for me because I would have thought an action like this could shake them out of their biased worldview, but this has actually seemed to do the opposite and make them hate Israel more. It's also pretty unfortunate we have to share a country with these kinds of people and they can vote. I'm not saying you need to love Israel and can't be critical of it, but what happened is to me pretty obviously evil and barbaric, and a lot of people are making excuses for it.
Is anyone else here pretty shocked by many on the Left's support of Hamas after these attacks? I'm not talking Biden type people on the Left, but DSA type leftists who support "The Squad".
No, this has always been their position when it comes to Israel vs. Palestine. I also remember similar people, back in 2001, suggesting or outright saying that the US brought 9/11 on themselves.
The English language really needs to deprecate phrasing that can be interpreted as either attribution of causal influence or attribution of blame. It's possible for "X's actions made Y more likely" to be obviously true in cases where "X's actions made Y morally acceptable" is obviously false. Round them both up to "true" and you may find yourself excusing atrocities; round them both down to "false" and you may find yourself ignoring ways to reduce atrocities. But how easy is it not to lump such claims together when we can barely speak about them distinguishably?
Thank you for correcting my mistaken insinuation. I was intending to point out the magazine more than the specific author, but I did just assume they'd be in sync. I should have known better than to assume that someone (relatively!) isolationist must be leftist for writing about it in a progressive magazine; unpopular politics (and standing on those principles at that time wasn't too popular) make strange bedfellows.
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Notes -
Is anyone else here pretty shocked by many on the Left's support of Hamas after these attacks? I'm not talking Biden type people on the Left, but DSA type leftists who support "The Squad". They are more or less saying that Israel deserved this. I really don't understand how you can see a bunch of men slaughter innocent civilians at a music festival, kill innocent civilians just going about their day, capture women and children as hostages, and parade dead bodies around on trucks and upload it to social media and not have sympathy for Israelis. Yet these people are more or less saying Israel deserved this and the real victims of this will be Palestine.
I don't think this is a strawman either. If you go on reddit or Twitter you will see this sentiment. I guess this is the inevitable outcome of the oppressor/oppressed decolonize framework so many of them have adopted. This is pretty blackpilling for me because I would have thought an action like this could shake them out of their biased worldview, but this has actually seemed to do the opposite and make them hate Israel more. It's also pretty unfortunate we have to share a country with these kinds of people and they can vote. I'm not saying you need to love Israel and can't be critical of it, but what happened is to me pretty obviously evil and barbaric, and a lot of people are making excuses for it.
No, this has always been their position when it comes to Israel vs. Palestine. I also remember similar people, back in 2001, suggesting or outright saying that the US brought 9/11 on themselves.
Similar institutions, even. The Nation, October 2001, "blowback".
The English language really needs to deprecate phrasing that can be interpreted as either attribution of causal influence or attribution of blame. It's possible for "X's actions made Y more likely" to be obviously true in cases where "X's actions made Y morally acceptable" is obviously false. Round them both up to "true" and you may find yourself excusing atrocities; round them both down to "false" and you may find yourself ignoring ways to reduce atrocities. But how easy is it not to lump such claims together when we can barely speak about them distinguishably?
The author of that Nation piece, Chalmers Johnson, was a former professor of mine. He was hardly a leftist.
Thank you for correcting my mistaken insinuation. I was intending to point out the magazine more than the specific author, but I did just assume they'd be in sync. I should have known better than to assume that someone (relatively!) isolationist must be leftist for writing about it in a progressive magazine; unpopular politics (and standing on those principles at that time wasn't too popular) make strange bedfellows.
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