I genuinely do not know who the bad guys are. S lot of my leftist friends are against Israel, but from what I know Israel was attacked and is responding and trying to get their hostages back.
Enlighten me. Am I wrong? Why am I wrong?
And dumb it down for me, because apparently I’m an idiot.
Hamas are the good guys
Stay away from humanity, please.
you would have condemned the jews in the Warsaw ghetto uprising, if you were alive in 1943
There are no “good guys” in a conflict between religious people.
Read the excellent Decolonize Palestine website to learn about the vital context that makes Israel’s claim of self defense deeply disingenuous, and to learn about some of the falsehoods about Israel and Palestine that are present in mainstream discourse.
There are no “good guys” in a conflict between religious people.
So the people fighting everyday to stop the literal genocide of their people can’t be good…because they are religious?
Where are the good guys in non-religious (scientific) leaders?
They are all scheming to gain more power and control.
Humans are just not emotionally ready to recognize where all this leads.
There are no “good guys” in a conflict between religious people.
Religion does play a role in the conflict, particularly over the question of where the border between an Israeli and Palestian state should go (so that holy sites end up on the appropriate side), but I don’t think it’s very useful to understand this as a religious conflict.
The Jews who moved to Israel in the early 20th century weren’t pilgrims. They were refugees fleeing political persecution. The founder of Zionism wasn’t even religious.
And Israel didn’t happen because religious Jews enthusiastically got behind the idea of Zionism. Israel happened because Britain got behind the idea of Zionism.
Because the Crusdaes of the 11th to 13th centuries still loom large in Western culture (Richard the Lionheart and all that), I think Westerners have a tendency to think that the situation in Israel/Palestine is a continuation of those conflicts. But it’s really not. It’s a 20th century creation.
Arabs leaders was also so stupid, they kicked most of the non zionist jews from Arabs lands in response to kicking out Palestinians after 48 loss instead of trying to make them allies
The first violent Zionist settlers started migrating in the late 1800s, not the 20th century, this is more Zionist propaganda that leaves out the early terror in Palestine that foreshadowed the rest of the conflict. These early terror groups were mostly ineffective, but their eventual dissolution lead to Zionist thought spreading to what are now the top supporters and financiers of Israel. the rest of the comment is spot on though.
The largest armed force in the gaza strip is deeply religious and the entire reason the support they receive from their biggest ally, the IRR, is religion. If Hamas were Sunni muslims instead of Shia, Iran would remain silent. Just as they were, when their Shia allies in Syria and Yemen started to massacre non-Shia in the region.
If Hamas were Sunni muslims instead of Shia
Hamas are Sunni.
Hezbollah are Shia.
Your link is broke https://decolonizepalestine.com/
There are no good guys and bad guys.
2 groups of people who are neighbors and relatives and share a common heritage keep killing each other, mostly due to shitty rulers who have no interest in their peoples’ well-being.There are no good guys and bad guys.
2 groups of people who are neighbors and relatives and share a common heritage keep killing each other, mostly due to shitty rulers who have no interest in their peoples’ well-being.Genocide isn’t bad? Palestine and Israel are just neighbors despite Israel being on land stolen by the British and Israel being propped up by western powers to oppress Palestinians?
You could say the same thing about almost any conflict.
2 groups of people who are neighbors and relatives ✓
Share a common heritage (European/German)✓
Keep killing each other ✓
Shitty rulers who have no interest in their people’s well being ✓
Seems like there were no bad guys in WW2/The Holocaust, because using power to oppress and conduct genocide isn’t what makes a bad guy apparently.
I mean the whole reason why you are confused is that this is the most complex conflict in the world and here (like everywhere else) you are going to get responses in both directions. I suggest you read what each side has to say for itself: for unconditional pro-Israeli propaganda I suggest https://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/ and for unconditional pro-Palestinian propaganda I suggest https://mondoweiss.net/ – read both of these and decide for yourself what arguments on both sides you believe more.
I do not think there are any truly good guys in the conflict; but I do think that Israel is worse and tend to side with the Palestinians. This is mainly because Israel is the side with vastly more power and I think it’s up to the powerful, the oppressor, to try to treat the people they have power over with dignity and try to give up the power they have.
Of course, even that argument of mine has a counter-argument! You can (and should!) read it here: https://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-parameters-of-discussion-michael.html
Mondoweiss isn’t unconditional pro-Palestine propaganda. It’s a well-sourced pro-Palestinian news site.
If you believe that, you’re just as biased as they are. Check the archive page from last October and tell us that with a straight face. https://mondoweiss.net/news/page/61/
Maybe provide examples? I see nothing that would prevent me from saying that with a straight face. There, lemme just…
Mondoweiss isn’t unconditional pro-Palestine propaganda. It’s a well-sourced pro-Palestinian news site.
Maybe provide examples? I see nothing that would prevent me from saying that with a straight face.
Gee, I don’t know, I vaguely recall a (perhaps minor) news item happening on the 7th, something about a music festival? I may be misremembering though, since this very impartial news site has no mention of it whatsoever.
So omission bias? All this fanfare for omission bias? Nobody is using Mondoweiss as their primary news source; they have no reason to report on everything, especially an event like Nova music festival was reported on by everyone and their mother.
Mondoweiss is using the same kind of euphemisms around the 7.10 that the rest of the press is using for Israels crimes.
It is not complex at all, it is just genocidal settler colonialism and resistance to it. “Complexity” is just a proxy for being uncomfortable acknowledging this, which is something you should do some introspection on as someone from a German instance. Ever hear of the Holocaust? Of Lebensraum?
Never again means never again for anyone.
The thing is that I actually mostly agree with you, but I do not think that the other side is entirely illegitimate.
Which part of genocidal racist settler colonists is legitimate to you?
What legitimacy do you see in Israeli Apartheid? Because, long story short, that’s what the Israeli side is selling.
I’m not here for a drawn out debate. I think Israel’s settlement program is a major reason why there is no peace and I would find Israel a lot easier to defend if they weren’t doing it. It is only one piece of the puzzle though.
If you ignore the 80 years of oppression that preceded the Hamas attacks on Israel last year, the Israeli response has been one of genocidal intent. From indiscriminate bombings to cutting off supplies of food, water and other aid. They have directly killed at least 40k people, and likely many more from starvation and preventable diseases.
This could have been easily avoided by a simple prisoner swap. Israel has thousands of Palestinians detained without charge, and Hamas wanted to free them.
The 40k number has been steady since early this year. This is not because Israel stopped its mass murder campaign. Instead, it is because they have destroyed the reporting apparatus itself, killing healthcare workers and bureaucrats in a civilian-targeted ethnic cleansing campaign. There is nobody there to do the counts. The hospitals are largely bombed out. Israel targets all aid workers; there is nobody from international orgs to do the counts.
Everyone who opposes genocide, colonialism, and terrorism are the good guys, so neither Israel or Hamas.
But Hamas is not Palestine/Palestinians, the same way that Israel/Zionism is not Jewish/Judaism; no matter how much Israel, Hamas, the media, or military industrial complex tries to conflate them all.
IMO Israel is more to blame than Hamas as they should know better given a) their history of persecution b) their significantly greater wealth and education, and c) their demographics — more than half of all Palestinians are technically children, below 18.
Don’t forget that Hamas has been supported by Netanyahu in the past because they are a useful tool to prevent a longer standing peace…
Just leave it alone, cause they can’t see eye to eye. There ain’t no good guys. There ain’t no bad guys. There’s only Jews and Ps and they just disagree.
Israelis and Palestinians. Many Jews are against what Israel is doing.
It’s a terrorist organization vs terrorist state. The only good guys are the civilians dying on both sides.
The Middle East has been cooking for so long, it’s impossible to point at a faction that is the “Good Guys”. But right now, one faction is hell-bent on exterminating another nation’s people, both military and civilian, so it should be pretty fucking obvious who the worst “Bad Guys” are. There are no good guys, only victims.
You should read Ramzi Yousef’s statement at his 1998 trial. Terrorist factions like Hezbollah and Hamas exist only because Israel is consistently refusing to make peace through diplomacy.
How about not calling the municipal governments of populations targeted with genocide ‘terrorists’ unless you’re one of the nazis trying to use that as an excuse to exterminate them?
Every person I’ve talked to that had some real qualifications on that topic says that Israel are the good guys and the people of Palestine are caught in the crossfire of the war.
Every “qualified” person you talked to says the ethnic supremacist apartheid settler colonists are the good guys?
Which Nazi bars do you hang out in?
In US academia anyone who advocates for the Palestinian cause are regularly purged
Funny you call me “Nazi” when you’re apparently the antisemite who wants to see the state of Israel destroyed.
The state of Israel is an apartheid ethnostate. No apartheid ethnostate should exist, just like it is good that apartheid South Africa no longer exists and was displaced through armed resistance, negotiations, and a plebiscite.
So, tell me which Nazi bars you hang out in where the only “qualified” people are pro-ethnostate.
Are the real qualifications a caliper set and an unwillingness to talk about what they used to do before they got a position in the west German military?
No, the qualifications are people who have studied that conflict for decades and journalists that have been to Gaza and Israel themselves.
I value their opinion significantly higher than the opinion of people on Lemmy that haven’t taken 5 minutes out of their day to read up on the conflict.
And all these people think Israel are the good guys? I wonder what their opinions about apartheid South Africa were at the time.
Israel was explicitly founded as a settler-colonial project, you can look up quotes from famous founding zionists.
“You are being invited to help make history … it doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen, but Jews … How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial.”
Theodore Herzl to a Rhodesian representative
So, because the foundations were colonial, we should … kill everyone living in said country?
Is that a serious argument? Because then we have a lot of places to eradicate.
First off, the foundations remain the same, colonial.
Second off, is creating a secular democracy without an apartheid system, aka “destroying Israel” going to kill everyone? Did the collapse of apartheid South Africa kill all the white people there?
The collapse didn’t. But the goal or “Mission” of the Hamas is to eradicate all jews.
So yes, Israel falling would result in the eradication of a vast majority of the Jewish people.
But the goal or “Mission” of the Hamas is to eradicate all jews.
Source that isn’t from the 90s when they were a marginal fundamentalist group and not a leading member of a coalition fighting for a secular democracy?
The good guys are the citizens who want none of this.
The bad guys are the citizens who want all of this, and the military personal behind the weapons, and the generals calling the shots.
Same as it ever was.
This simplistic one size fits all argument falls flat when one side is being occupied and ethnically cleaned by the other side. It implies that Hamas is the “bad guy” and all other occupied Palestinians are the “good guy,” and it implies that non-military Israeli settlers are the “‘good guy.” But the truth is that the great majority of adult Israelis are militant settler-colonizers; and that Palestinians have the legal right under UN law to struggle against their occupiers by any means necessary, including armed struggle; and that Israel, as an occupier, has no right to “self defense.”
When you can’t support your own arguments, you could of course just acknowledge this or even just not comment at all instead of lashing out at those who can.
It is particularly disgusting when your arguments serve to obscure genocide.
thank you for telling me I should block you.
That’s your own mess lol
Can we please block .world already?
You want to defederate from the largest Lemmy instance, the poster child, and the mascot of Lemmy? Good luck. They are Lemmy now.
Don’t care. If I gave a shit about the biggest instance because it has the most users, then I would have stayed on Reddit which has orders of magnitudes more users and to put it in the linked comment’s words, they still are link aggregators in the the commenter thinks .world “are” Lemmy. The whole damn point of federation is your instance is not locked into what the biggest instance wants to do.
Sees lemmy.world
Sees weird .ML obsession and conflation of victims fighting oppressors with their oppressors
Yeah, not surprised.
It’s kinda funny how fediverse servers are kinda akin to countries. USonians see someone from a country on the “countries of concern” list, and instantly assume every single person from that country is sneaky, lying, acting in bad faith, or insert whatever other adjective here.
We don’t or shouldn’t make that same mistake. There are good people on every fediverse server, and we shouldn’t blanket demonize whole groups like racist colonizer ideology does.
What does your both-sidesing accomplish here? Are you trying to say that Palestine’s resistance to colonialism isn’t justified?
If so, then you’re doing this gandhi quote, but for the palestinian resistance.
Another lemmy.ml user to the rescue.
Blocked.
The good guys are the citizens
I’m going to have to stop you right there, because the Palestinians are not the citizens of any state: they are a people being occupied, apatheided, and genocided by the state of Israel. So there’s a “very, very simple truth” for you.
Oh my goodness would you look at that it’s lemmy.ml again
Bye 👋
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out 👋
The good guys, like in every war, is everybody who doesn’t want to violently impose something on someone else - i.e. in this case, the populations of Israel and Gaza who aren’t IDF or Hamas and just want a better life for their loved ones without hurting anyone else to get it.
And like in all wars, that’s the vast majority of the populations of both warring parties.
Up until 1967, the bad guys were Britain.
Britain seized Palestine from the Ottomans during WWI with the help of the local Palestinians, promising the Palestinians sovereignty in exchange for their help overthrowing the Ottomans.
At the same time, Britain promised to create a homeland for Jews in Palestine (in the Balfour Declaration), and Jewish refugees from Europe began settling in Palestine. Britain did this because they thought they might gain the support of Jewish financiers for their war efforts. l
The Balfour Declaration was deliberately vague about whether Britain was giving all of the land to the Jews or just some of the land. It was vague because Britain wanted to appeal to Jewish Zionists (who wanted all of Palestine) while not alienating the Palestinians.
Britain never did divide the land, resulting in two different populations who felt they legally owned the land, one who had always been there, and one who mostly arrived as refugees.
When Britain left following WWII, a civil war broke out for control of the land. A border was eventually drawn at the line of control (which ran through the middle of Jersusalem), and Israelis declared the new State of Israel, while Palestinian refugees fled to their side of the border or neighbouring states. That was in 1947.
So, up until then, it’s a messy situation created by Britain, but one which eventually resulted in the land being split (albeit violently), with both Israelis and Palestians having a state, and each having part of Jerusalem. The world accepted this as the new status quo and hoped it would be sustained peacefully.
That changed in 1967 when Israel annexed the Palestinian lands (the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) in the Six Days War. Since then, Palestians have been living under a harsh Israeli occcupation as a stateless people (meaning no citizenship), with their rights and freedoms strictly curtailed. Palestinians have been resisting through a number of resistance movements, usually designated as terrorist groups in the Western media.
There was a political movement towards peace and repartitioning of the land that peaked in the 1990s, but since then it has been held up by a series of right-wing governments in Israel. Meanwhile, Israel has been aggressively building Jewish neighbourhoods (called settlements) in the formerly Palestinian lands of the West Bank.
So since 1967, Israel has pretty clearly been the bad guy.
The terrorist attack that killed 1200 young Israelis was horrific, and we should all hope nothing like that ever happens again. But the root cause of the attack was Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. The way to prevent future terror attacks is to end the oppression of the Palestinian people.
Nice of you to gloss over the fact that the 6 day war was an attempt to annihilate Israel’s existence…
Israel struck first in the Six Days War.
Over a shipping route.
Israel started the six day war by striking its neighbors. It wanted that war, it knew it had dedicated sponsors that would back them up.
PS Israel, as an apartheid ethnostare premised on settler colonialism, should not exist. The “state” of Israel should be abolished and replaced by a non-apartheid, non-ethnostate that includes all of the people and guarantees a return of stolen homes and land.
That’s a pretty good summary. I will add that the partition plan was deliberate tactic by Ben-Gurion to set a precedent for the Ethnic Cleansing needed to create the Settler Colonialist Ethnostate within Palestine. The alternative presented by Palestinian Representatives was a Unitary State for both Israelis and Palestinians.
Partition
The Zionist position changed in 1928, when the pragmatic Palestinian leaders agreed to the principle of parity in a rare moment in which clannish and religious differences were overcome for the sake of consensus. The Palestinian leaders feared that without parity the Zionists would gain control of the political system. The unexpected Palestinian agreement threw the Zionist leaders into temporary confusion. When they recovered, they sent a refusal to the British, but at the same time offered an alternative solution: the partitioning of Palestine into two political units.
- Pg 132 of Ilan Pappe - A History of Modern Palestine
On 31 August 1947, UNSCOP presented its recommendations to the UN General Assembly. Three of its members were allowed to put forward an alternative recommendation. The majority report advocated the partition of Palestine into two states, with an economic union. The designated Jewish state was to have most of the coastal area, western Galilee, and the Negev, and the rest was to become the Palestinian state. The minority report proposed a unitary state in Palestine based on the principle of democracy. It took considerable American Jewish lobbying and American diplomatic pressure, as well as a powerful speech by the Russian ambassador to the UN, to gain the necessary two-thirds majority in the Assembly for partition. Even though hardly any Palestinian or Arab diplomat made an effort to promote the alternative scheme, it won an equal number of supporters and detractors, showing that a considerable number of member states realized that imposing partition amounted to supporting one side and opposing the other.
- Pg 181 of Ilan Pappe - A History of Modern Palestine
Ethnic Cleansing and Settler Colonialism
Israel justifies the settlements and military bases in the West Bank in the name of Security. However, the reality of the settlements on-the-ground has been the cause of violent resistance and a significant obstacle to peace, as it has been for decades.
This type of settlement, where the native population gets ‘Transferred’ to make room for the settlers, is a long standing practice.
- The Transfer Committee, and the JNF Ethnic Cleansing, which led to Forced Displacement of 100,000 Palestinians throughout the mandate before the Nakba
The mass ethnic cleansing campaign of 1948:
Further, declassified Israeli documents show that the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip were deliberately planned before being executed in 1967:
While the peace process was exploited to continue de-facto annexation of the West Bank via Settlements
The settlements are maintained through a violent apartheid that routinely employs violence towards Palestinians and denies human rights like water access, civil rights, etc. This kind of control gives rise to violent resistance to the Apartheid occupation, jeopardizing the safety of Israeli civilians.
Visualizing the Ethnic Cleansing
Peace Process and Solution
Both Hamas and Fatah have agreed to a Two-State solution based on the 1967 borders for decades. Oslo and Camp David were used by Israel to continue settlements in the West Bank and maintain an Apartheid, while preventing any actual Two-State solution
How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution
‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe
One State Solution, Foreign Affairs
Hamas proposed a full prisoner swap as early as Oct 8th, and agreed to the US proposed UN Permanent Ceasefire Resolution. Additionally, Hamas has already agreed to no longer govern the Gaza Strip, as long as Palestinians receive liberation and a unified government can take place.
Historian Works on the History
-
Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History - Nur Masalha
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The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948 - Nur Masalha
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A History of Modern Palestine - Ilan Pappe
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The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine - Rashid Khalidi
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The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappe
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The 1967 Arab-Israeli War: Origins and Consequences - Avi Shlaim
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The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories - Ilan Pappe
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The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development - Sara Roy
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10 Myths About Israel - Ilan Pappe (summery)
There’s something else I want to mention.
In 1947, the UN attempted to sort out Britain’s mess by creating a “partition plan” in which the land would be split between a state of Israel and a state of Palestine.
Though adopted as a UN resolution, it was never implemented, and the aforementioned civil war broke out instead.
I just mention this because I find a lot of people are under the misimpression that Israel was created by the UN in 1947 as some kind of compensation for the Holocaust, and that’s not what happened.
while Palestinian refugees fled to their side of the border or neighbouring states.
Technically not incorrect, but too much passive voice. Palestinian refugees were expelled by Israel, either by being directly told to leave or die or through massacres.
The terrorist attack that killed 1200 young Israelis
Another correction: The attack that killed 1200 Israelis, 33% of which were legitimate military targets and 66% of which were civilians. Don’t let Israel trick you into thinking Hamas just entered, killed a bunch of civilians and left, because that creates what they consider justification for their genocide.
If 66% of 1200 are civilians killed by Hamas then
Don’t let Israel trick you into thinking Hamas just entered, killed a bunch of civilians and left
is false.
I’m not a pro-Israel person, I hate Netanyahu with a passion but still Hamas killing innocent people is not deserving of compassion albeit I understand their reason.
is false.
How so? Hamas attacked a number of Israeli military bases and outposts on October 7th, which was along with taking hostages the goal of the attack. The Israeli narrative conveniently ignores that, painting the whole thing as one big act of barbarism.
still Hamas killing innocent people is not deserving of compassion albeit I understand their reason.
It’s not about compassion. They definitely committed a bunch of atrocities on October 7th, and that very much deserves condemnation, but ignoring the very real military goals behind the attacks helps no one but Israel. Nobody really talks about that anymore, but if you remember before it was overshadowed by the genocide in Gaza things like how much of Israeli accusations against Hamas was true, how many casualties were Israeli friendly fire, what Hamas’s goals behind the attack were, etc etc were still open questions. The world quite reasonably stopped focusing on these things because Israel kept one-upping themselves in genociding Gazans, but that had the side effect of cementing the Israeli narrative on them as reality in the minds of most pro-Palestinian Westerners. What I’m saying is: Condemning terror that happened during the attack and condemning the attack itself are a different things, and one of them invalidates many legitimate acts of resistance.
Another correction: The attack that killed 1200 Israelis, 33% of which were legitimate military targets and 66% of which were civilians.
I never said they were civilians.
Yes but that’s the implication when you say “the terririst attack that killed 1200 young Israelis”.
I wasn’t implying that.
I mean okay but that’s how it reads like, especially because that myth is still alive and well.
They were young people who were gathered for a music concert.
Israel has compulsory military service for young people, so many of them were enlisted in the military. That doesn’t change the fact that they were young.
Also do not forget that on 10/7 Israeli helicopters were firing on civilians and the state censors have been covering this up. There are attempts to ban Haaretz, a friendly mouthpiece for state interests, because they have been reporting on this.
Concise, eloquent, and fair. I regret that I have but one upvote to give.
I don’t think there is a good guy:
Hamas Attacked Israel and killed more people in the attack relative to the population then 9/11. They used the population of the Gazastrip as human shields, building there bases in the City sometimes near hospitals. Using human shields is a war crime. UN schools use(d) books in which Israels existence is disclaimed. Hamas doesn’t want a two state solution, they want the complete destruction of Israel. Remember, not every Palestinian is Hamas, but a large portion of them supported the terror attack.
On the other side is Israel, the only democratic nation in the near east. Occupying parts of Syria, Lebanon, the west Bank and Gaza. Building villages in the occupied partes of West Bank for decades, illegally. The occupied Gaza just like the westbank until the mid 2000s when they retreated and left the villages. Hamas got into power and attacked Israel many times with simple rockets. After the devastating terror attack last year the responded with hard force killing many hamas fighters, but much more civilians. To be clear, it isn’t a war crime when there are some civilians under the casualties. But in my opinion, Israel wasn’t killing many hamas and there where a few civilians, they killed some Hamas and there were many normal people, sometimes ignoring them. But remember, Hamas wants this they want the world to hate Israel. If that means that many Palestinians die, so what. They used civilians as shields, hiding in them (war crime) Whether in city’s or refugee camps, hamas tried to hide there, putting normal Palestinians in danger.
To be honest, I don’t think we will see a solution to this decade long conflict in the near future. :(
Israel is using Palestinians as human shield. How do you expect Hamas to not be in civilians area in a highly populated 365 square kilometers area? Do you expect Hamas to kill themselves or to let Israel occupy land with no resistance at all? By resistance, I don’t mean things like 7 of October but something like attacking military target
They used the population of the Gazastrip as human shields, building there bases in the City sometimes near hospitals. Using human shields is a war crime.
Correction: Israel claims they used (and still use) human shields. Those claims have not been proven in any way. You’ll say they build their military bases and headquarters in cities, but literally every military in the world does that.
Hamas doesn’t want a two state solution,
Look up the 2008 and 2012 ceasefires. Hamas isn’t fundamentally opposed to a two-state solution. It’s not their preferred result, but they’ve taken part in serious peace deals more than once only for Israel to destroy the whole thing.
Don’t forget that Israel’s government also has explicitly said it wants to ethnically cleanse and genocide the Palestinians, on multiple occassions. It also isn’t democratic, considering there quite literally is a case of apartheid state.
I’m happy they are a “democracy”, but they need to actually live up to the word instead of the former victim becoming the perpetrator themselves.
I doubt most Palestinians actually support the terror attack. If they do, they probably want revenge for the Nakba in 1948, in where Israel has systematically expulsed and cleansed Palestinians from their native soil.
Not that it solves anything, but it’s hard to feel sympathy and anger to both, when it is overall a tragedy that only has one true solution:
Both sides living in peace, equal among kin, with no animosity, with no fascist Israeli government, with no calls to genocide from either side.
There certainly is a good guy and it’s called the citizens who just don’t want their governments to be shit, and to cooperate instead. The citizens who want to return to their country. The citizens that don’t settle. The citizens that want loved ones back, but don’t call for murder. Those are your good guys: normal people, who do not contribute to hatred.
I think there certainly is a solution. The question is whether the US actually has the balls to put multiple warships near the fascist Israel government and Hamas’ repression and credibly threaten both sides (with actual consequences following if neither listens), unless if the former retreats from all settlements and actually contributes to cooperation with the right to return and full citizenship, and the latter releases the prisoners alive and well, and agrees to cooperate as well.
This, all while guaranteeing the right of queers to be enshrined, the seculars to actually have secular marriages, the religious to cooperate and build an interfaith communion.
Hatred needs to be exterminated. If fascists and dictatorships do not listen (they never do), they need to be fought on all fronts.
If they do, they probably want revenge for the Nakba in 1948, in where Israel has systematically expulsed and cleansed Palestinians from their native soil.
The Nakba was really bad and heavily shapes modern Palestinian consciousness, but nobody is seeking revenge for the Nakba itself anymore. It’s more about retaliating against much more recent and current offenses, mainly the Gaza blockade and settlements, resisting Israeli occupation and freeing Palestinian detainees.
Forget everything you know (or think you know) about the conflict for a second. Now look at what human rights groups, including the UN, have to say about what’s happening in Gaza and Lebanon. It’s called a genocide because it is; it’s really that simple and there are mountains of evidence published by the likes of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and, again the UN. Also to dispell that particular piece of propaganda: they’re not trying to get the hostages back. If they were they’d turn the first ceasefire agreement into a “permanent” ceasefire (there are no permanent ceasefires in this conflict) and end the whole thing. They want to genocide and settle Gaza, so they’re doing that while sabotaging ceasefire negotiations.
By the way if you’re going to side with the side that has hostages, then you should read up on Palestinian detainees first. Long story short: Israel arrests Palestinians from the West Bank or (until 2005) Gaza for dubious or no charges—which they can do because these places are governed under Israeli military law rather than civil law—and sometimes torture them while stealing years of their life. Part of Palestinian resistance organizations’ raison d’etre is to return those people to their homes, which requires constant action because Israel arrests more Palestinians every day. There were already thousands of those detainees before October 7th and thousands more have been arrested after. Note: We’re not talking about Palestinians who are arrested for legitimate crimes doing their time here; these people were kidnapped as a punishment against Palestinians for existing. If this doesn’t sound like hostages to you, you should do some soul searching and ask yourself if you’re trying to learn or justify your beliefs.
This probably sounds biased to you, but I took care to only state verifiable, indisputably objective facts here Sometimes things are just that simple. That doesn’t make Hamas good guys; they’re more gray with some legitimate resistance actions and some straight up terrorism, and it’s not always clear which is which.
Finally, if you want to learn more about the conflict in general and about the conditions that drove Hamas to launch the October 7th attack to begin with, you should see what Amnesty International and other human rights groups have to say on the topic. The long story short is that Israel subjects Palestinians to Apartheid conditions along with a slow-burn genocide to serve their long-term goal of colonizing the whole Palestine and (to their more extremist factions) expand beyond it.
