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.
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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.
Israel does deserve it. They started it, which despite what legions of corrupt teachers have tried to say to the contrary, actually matters a lot. As of writing and last checking Israeli dead 700-1,000 / Palestinian dead 900. And that's just recently. By objective measure Israelis have killed more Palestinian women & children (tm) than vice versa. Soon the Gazan dead will eclipse the Israelis without argument and there is sure to be some hot young Wonderful Women in the bundle to boot. I'm mildly and darkly curious how the narrative will 180 when that happens. I don't know what's going through the heads of vaguely self aware people when they resort to counting bodies for sob story moral victory points.
Okay, I don't know quite where to start with this. This looks like the spectre of the warmed over "Cultural Marxism" myth/conspiracy theory. Certain reactionary conservative types can't seem to let this meme go. Not only is it wrong (that's not what Marxism is and the dastardly Frankfurt School did not even the concept of oppressors), it doesn't make sense. This idea is ridiculously simple and generic yet some people keep speaking of it like they've discovered some secret.
Is Lord of the Rings a Marxist and/or oppressor/oppressed story and liberal brain virus? Sauron is clearly an oppressor. No, it's a universal human value. What is the number one whine about the USSR? That it was mean and oppressive. Are anti-Communist Conservatives Marxist?
It makes no sense to tolerate evil if you have equal or greater power. However evil that has superior power is a problem. Aka an oppressor/oppressed dynamic. It's just common logic. If someone invaded your house to steal/rape and you have a gun whatever. If they have a gun and you don't, now the oppressed are sympathetic.
Also Israel is a colonial oppressor. That's just facts. Do the native Palestinians have power/freedom do get Israeli invaders out of their homeland and stop making them miserable? No.
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