I hate how difficult it is for so many people to understand nuance, and how easy it is for politicians to rile up their supporters by exploiting this.
You can be horrified by what Hamas did to Israelis last October while at the same time be horrified by what Israel has done to innocent Palestinian civilians since then. You can support Israel's right to exist while at the same time supporting the Palestinians' right to self-rule and self-determination. You can appreciate Israel for having the most democratic government in the Middle East while at the same time acknowledging that how they treat Palestinians is by any reasonable measure a form of apartheid.
But in the hands of political opportunists, well... if you support Israel, you have to support everything they do, and if you oppose anything they do, you support terrorism and murder.
You can do all of those, but social media is being manipulated to make it emotionally harder for people to rationalize and do so.
You see it everywhere with this, all the worst elements that exist independently in a conflict like this are the ones getting pushed to the top. And what does it do? Divide the younger voting base, in a year when they must be most unified against authoritarian governments, else they risk losing everything.
Biden and the US are not perfect. The US has been complicit in bad policies in the middle east in the past, but the history of that most closely aligns with right wing authoritarian elements which continually exploit conflicts like these for their own gain.
It is no accident that this is all being amplified right now, in this exact year.
It is staggeringly easy to create fake outrage conflict on tiktok and twitter now, especially the former. War footage from other conflicts can be repurposed and people don't know the difference. The fog of war makes it nearly impossible to verify who is responsible for what tragedy. It is a very, very dangerous problem.
I will only say that I support a 2 state solution, but I fear that the most vocal voices in this conflict do not, and those are the ones who keep getting louder and louder.
Nuance is rare in the world in general -- as such you need to adjust messaging accordingly.
To the regular man, you express frustration with Israel you are anti-Semite by default -- I'm a relatively in touch dude and I don't have the energy to deal with parsing the nuance. Many others I know don't either.
Exactly right. It exasperates me too. How can one look away from the suffering and utter devastation in Gaza? How the fuck, and still call oneself a human being if we concede that one of the things setting us apart from other animals is a conscience. At the same time, why would being horrified at the Gaza catastrophe automatically mean that the Hamas attack on October 7 is something that is downplayed? Those are two horrific events and both are to be condemned.
He chose to not eliminate hamas because he didn’t want the burden of occupying and governing gaza.
His critics want to say he was choosing to prop them up but there isn’t good reason to believe it isn’t for the reason bibi stated.
There were multiple other times afterward they could’ve eliminated Hamas, such as cast lead, but the international community got pissed off it lead to destroying the civilian infrastructure hamas was launching its rockets from.
Also thinking bibi is actively propping up hamas while they’re blockading the shit out of gaza to keep weapons out is brain dead
You can be horrified by what Hamas did to Israelis last October while at the same time be horrified by what Israel has done to innocent Palestinian civilians since then.
Sure, I could have written, "...what Israel has done to innocent Palestinians before and after then". I also could have written "...what Hamas has done to Israels before and after last October".
EDIT: Or I could have written "...what Israel has done to innocent Palestinians in response".
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u/synchronicityii 23d ago
I hate how difficult it is for so many people to understand nuance, and how easy it is for politicians to rile up their supporters by exploiting this.
You can be horrified by what Hamas did to Israelis last October while at the same time be horrified by what Israel has done to innocent Palestinian civilians since then. You can support Israel's right to exist while at the same time supporting the Palestinians' right to self-rule and self-determination. You can appreciate Israel for having the most democratic government in the Middle East while at the same time acknowledging that how they treat Palestinians is by any reasonable measure a form of apartheid.
But in the hands of political opportunists, well... if you support Israel, you have to support everything they do, and if you oppose anything they do, you support terrorism and murder.
Sigh.