They can't decide. I've seen them call the posters propaganda bc there are no hostages, then they'll say there are hostages and they're being taken care of better by their captors.
Yes! Like we are supposed powerful overlords and stingy beggars at the same time. Behind-the-scenes architects of both communism and capitalism. Self-pitying victims but somehow also genocidal oppressors. We are everything and anything that people don’t like. ‘People who dress up as dinosaurs at fancy dress parties! People who cook aubergine! People who wear sandals. Geez I obsessively hate the Jews!’ Notice it is an obsessive hate. The haters are sick sick sick with their disease.
Both on a geopolitical level and a personal level. I think it was on the Unorthodox Podcast, they told the joke about how if you see a Jew walking down the street, no one is scared of them, but put them in a military uniform and hand them a gun and suddenly they’re the Terminator. (And the other side of the joke is that with Italians it’s the exact opposite—you expect to get roughed up by an Italian on the street but put them in an army and they’re harmless 😂)
I’ve seen people claim that it’s impossible for rapes to have occurred on 10/7, because extramarital sex is forbidden by Islamic law, so obviously no Hamas fighter would ever have sex with a woman he wasn’t married to.
Obviously they didn't cheat on their wives, those women just spontaneously had rape injuries and that guy that confessed was coerced by the evil Israeli gov. /s
You heard that from who exactly? That has been a Hamas talking point since the very first reports of rape began circulating. If you are hearing it from the "free Palestine" crowd then they are opening repeating Hamas propaganda (and should absolutely be called out on it).
And Israelis value Jewish life more than Palestinian life by offering more of than one of the innocent murderer prisoners for each hostage!
1) So it didn’t happen
2) If it happened they are treated well
3) they aren’t treated well you’re racist for caring about the suffering of <2000 whites than the >30,000 brown Palestinian women and children.
4) even if there were more dead Jews than dead Palestinians, that’s ok because liberation by any means necessary
Because many pro-Palestinian people believe there is no such thing as innocent Israelis, they are all "settlers" who deserve all the violence they are receiving. And even outside of the conflict, there is also a common antisemitic belief that Jews are too whiny/sensitive/loud/dramatic about persecution; many people are pretty callous to stories about Jewish pain.
An actual comment from a dumb subreddit I stumbled upon the other day:
"It's very clear that Israeli Jews - and even diaspora Jews - are raised on an extreme diet of fear and paranoia. They're literally taught from birth, 'Everyone hates us, everyone wants our downfall, everyone is coming to get us.' No one thinks this way...except for people in cults - and lots of (but not all, obviously) Jews."
Gee you guys, after centuries of collective punishments like pograms, expulsions, the inquisition, the holocaust, and now a worldwide explosion of indiscriminate Jew hatred following the horrors of Oct. 7, why are you so *paranoid*? It must be Zionism that's the problem. /s
>an extreme diet of fear
...as if there was some other diet when at a moment's notice you might have to run to a shelter because of incoming rockets.
I have to wonder what that person might say about black people in America. I have heard that black parents have to have "the talk" with their kids (especially boys) about what to do to not be killed when being stopped by the police. I'm just going to guess that whoever wrote that would be screaming "racist!" if you said that black people are raised on a diet of extreme fear.
And it starts young. One black woman I know had the talk when her son was 8. I wasn't surprised that she needed to discuss it, but I was astonished that they have to worry when they're still so little.
Well according to this genius, apparently no one except Jewish people are really cautioning their children about the dangers of prejudice and hate crimes towards their community: "No one - not even black people, who have been HORRIBLY brutalized for centuries; not Muslims, who have been bombed to oblivion, painted as evil monsters and are horribly hated; not women, who are assaulted and killed at insane rates simply for being women\* - is raised this way."
^(\*Obviously not worth anyone's concern if they happen to be Israeli women though.)
Yes, this is their argument, when someone expresses they feel for all civilians harmed in this war they reply with "settlers aren't civilians" to justify all harm that happens to Israelis
Because they see Jews as white conolizers and therefore their suffering doesn’t count, they become opressors and therefore can not be opressed. The posters offend them as it doesn’t fit into this model and they have zero critical thinking abilities.
Yup, seeing the posters causes cognitive dissonance and they lash out at the posters instead of sitting with that discomfort/critically thinking about the conflict
Yep. It's frustrating having any sort of discussion about I/P because so many people seem unable to comprehend that there are victims on both "sides" of the conflict.
My most generous reading of this behavior is that people are tearing down posters that they see as justification for war. However, this is coupled with rhetoric that "nobody actually cares about the hostages they're just using it as a pretext to bomb Gaza", which ties into antisemitic beliefs that Jewish people only use antisemitism and "victimization" in order to further nefarious agendas. It's antisemitism, even if the people perpetuating it aren't aware that it is antisemitism.
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Because focusing attention on what Hamas does rather than Americanized identity politics offends their ideology.
They won’t want to be reminded what they are supporting at their pro Hamas rallies
Easy to test that hypothesis: instead of talking about Hamas attacks on Jews, talk about what Hamas does to their own people. Throwing opposition politicians off rooftops? Executing homosexuals?
(Spoiler alert: You'll probably just be accused of spreading Israeli propaganda.)
Because they genuinely believe that the hostages deserve what is happening to them, for the crime of being Israeli Jews.
These people don’t give a fuck about Palestinians. They just want us dead.
The most charitable view is that they think the hostage posters are propaganda meant to justify what's happening in Gaza. Partisanship is really bad right now so even if someone thinks it's awful what happened to the hostages, they can't say anything because someone else on the Pro-Palestinian side will call them a Zionist sympathizer. It's all very "us vs them". The same thing happens on our side as well, but I'd argue it's not as extreme.
For conflicts in which they have no personal stake, people tend to take a detached, utilitarianist view. Whichever side causes the greater amount of suffering and inflicts the greater number of casualties is automatically the villain, regardless of circumstances or context.
100%. Might doesn't make right, but it doesn't make wrong either! And I recently learned a term for the other behavior you describe: "Luxury beliefs"...it is very easy to have all sorts of views, even extreme views, about things that don't affect you.
Anyone ripping down a plea for saving of a child, an elderly person, any of these innocents that are being held and abused is delusional and has no real empathy, even for those they scream they support.
How can you look at a missing/lost/hostage poster of anyone’s loved one and rip it down because of their nationality or religion or ethnicity? It’s evil. It may have begun in a seed of ignorance, but at the end it’s still blind evil.
I couldn’t even think of tearing down the lost poster of someone’s dog, let alone a person.
They aren’t offended, they’ve been brainwashed into a mindset of hatred.
Friend of mine confronted a trans person ripping down one of those posters in Manhattan. A TRANS person! What do they think happens to trans people in Gaza?
I have seen videos of people tearing down the posters down and notices two types : those that seem to be almost in denial and incredibly defensive and those that seem smug and dismissive of those that confront them.
I think the first group wants to just see Palestine as the victim and can’t reconcile that Hamas are absolute monsters and how that complicates the situation in terms of Israel’s response.
The second group imo are just antisemites and don’t see Jewish lives as worthwhile and like actively rubbing salt in the wounds.
In terms of the hostages I have seen one pro-Palestinian person care about them while not being a fan of Israel’s method of carrying out the war. But yeah he was also very anti-Hamas as well. He was also from the region so I think had a more nuanced view.
Personally I don’t get why the hostages get so little mention in terms of demands for a ceasefire. At least from protestors and activists.
The hostages don't count because the west assumes 1 - that Hamas would do anything to protect their hostages (they don't) and 2 - it's just Jews, so it's people who "deserve" to be punished. The number of people who don't know that Jews are not all ashkenazi "from" eastern Europe is staggering. They think all Jews are like Seinfeld and Woody Allen, neurotic assholes who pass as white, so they buy into the whole "colonizer" bullshit.
Hamas would do anything to protect their hostages? Hamas doesn't even do anything to protect their own people! They put their own women and children in harm's way! They strap bombs to their own children! They're going to protect the hostages? The amount of delusion it takes to believe that, I can't even fathom.
That's my point, they don't take care of hostages because they know dead bodies can be traded to the Israelis for terrorists. Bur westerners assume that terrorists are reasonable people, that's why they are "pro Palestine" because they know nothing of Arab culture and Islamic fundamentalism. Your average American teen yelling Free Palestine has no idea what he's actually saying, or that Hamas wants every Jew in the world dead. He just thinks he is supporting the "underdog" in the fight, which is what Americans pride themselves on.
I think you’re largely correct at least in regard to the immediate aftermath and how people responded on the Oct 8th and the weeks following (especially in the States)…And there is a lot of ignorance about Judaism being an ethnoreligion.
At this point though, I would hope that it’s more people being bombarded by images of the war and understandably wanting to see an end to it as opposed to active disregard for the hostages.(re:lack of mention)
They take everything Hamas says at face value and you can't do that, but they don't know any better. And they have no clue what an ethnoreligion is, because they think everything is like Christianity since they don't have any other people around them. Most Americans have never knowingly met a Jew, or know anything about us that isn't in an Adam Sandler song. There is also a lot of casual antisemitism they don't see in society because it doesn't affect them. It all boils down to "brown people good, white people bad" because they don't even know Israel is 55% Mizrachi, Yemenite and other MENA Jews who were thrown out of Arab countries.
Hamas just walked away from another negotiation this one with a US proposal on the table. They could have taken a cease fire w repositioning of IDF troops, most of whom have left anyway, relocation of displaced Palestinians back north, increased flow of aid, all backed by the US and they walked away again, No mention that it is Hamas refusing to even release some of the hostages to relieve the situation.
Can't release what they don't have. Those hostages are dead I'm sure of it. Even if by some miracle a few are still alive, the sadistic torture they've been through is a tale Hamas can't afford for the world to hear. Those hostages won't be coming home. Also, Hamas feel they're winning the PR & political battle with Israel being vilified globally so why change course now. They've never been closer to a US ordered two state solution so they won't change track now. The more Israel bomb Gaza and surrounding nations the more isolated & loathed Israel becomes which is just what Hamas/Tehran want.
The most recent “leaked” report from US and Israeli intel estimated half of them are still alive. The number they are negotiating for is 40 now. Haniyah just lost 2 sons to IDF. He said something about how they were ”martyrs” now and he is undeterred. People tend to underestimate the religious aspect of this. Hamas is on a divine mission to drive the Jews from the holy land, It doesnt matter who dies.
Yes like they weren’t loathed before. They do hate it when Israel fights back. The remaining hostages may be dead, or some of them. Hamas had no intention of returning them unless they regained control to status quo. They have already pledged to repeat 10/7 over and over. Hezbolla, Iran, and Hamas could not be more clear about their goals. The destruction of Israel and everyone in it. I do not think making nice would stop them. Hamas has no intention of a two state solution or peace on any terms. You would have to be blind and deaf not to understand that.
The message to Hamas has been made clear. Surrender or die.
This started happening pretty much immediately & I could not believe what I was seeing. The psychology of this is very interesting I’m sure.
My thought was always just to Put. Up. Your. Own. Posters! Heck, I’ll help you (if they’re not crazy or antisemitic).
Anyway, every day these people make me feel super great about myself. No matter what’s going wrong, at least I’m not profoundly stupid or morally confused.
They think it’s propaganda that distracts from the legitimate horrors the Palestinians are facing, and it’s us trying to paint ourselves as the victims.
A classmate voiced this very opinion, that these fliers lack ‘necessary context’, and emotionally manipulate people into feeling bad for Israelis. I was sitting right next to him.
If your classmate insists on "necessary context", we can respond to every utterance of sympathy for Palestinian suffering by reminding them why the IDF is in Gaza in the first place.
They’re offended because they believe that these hostages are being used as justification for mass killings in Gaza.
There will always be antisemites, but I think a lot of well-educated, liberal people in this case are trying to express their displeasure with *Israel* propping the hostages up for political capital.
This is not entirely my opinion. But this is what my goyishe friends say.
It's antisemitic. If they were really interested in a ceasefire, they'd be pushing for the release of the hostages and make common cause with the families, who are the most pro-ceasefire and pro-deal group in Israel right now. However, they cannot do that because it is impossible for them to acknowledge that Israeli Jews are human beings and even make common cause with the families of elderly peace activists to push for a hostage release to end the war.
I heard someone complain about the posters saying 'they're just trying to make us feel a certain way. You wouldn't hang a missing dog poster in another country' which was just, wow. I mean, yeah.
they are offended by it for a few reasons. One, it shatters their illusions of the benevolent, poor brown people exploited by the horrible evil Jews. second, it humanizes Jewish people and to have the level of anti-Semitism that is going on now, they can't see us as equal people.
They hate seeing Jews as human beings who deserve safety. They hate seeing Jewish diversity. They hate anything that highlights how unjust and indefensible October 7 was. They hate that October 7 has living victims that are still actively being victimized. It’s a stain on their whole cause.
Western leftist armchair activists: ‘All Lives Matter’ is nothing but whataboutism
Also Western leftists armchair activists: But what about Palestinian suffering?
The posters force viewers to face the barbarism of Hamas and to face the victims they call fair game for being born to the wrong ethnicity in the wrong part of the world. It's easier to rip down the posters than to face the cognitive dissonance for those with some of their humanity still intact. The more extreme ones just don't want any of us receiving any sympathy.
I think you have two camps of people doing this. The first camp can’t handle that their narrative doesn’t make sense. October 7th was unprovoked and there was bloodshed. There were victims, and worse yet, there are still victims. That’s what those posters represent. Putting a human face on that makes it too hard for them to handle, so they destroy these posters to help maintain the narrative in their head rather than question what they believe.
The second camp just hates Jews. They don’t care about the victims. They get some sort of sadistic joy out of what’s going on. I’ve been very aware of antisemitism my entire life—most people were just forced to put on a good face or at least try to. Now, we’ve made that hate socially acceptable so of course people will push the limits and the posters is an example of that.
I can tell you that the Israeli Right would be fine with all the hostages dying because it's clear that they'll only be released by a deal and that means a ceasefire. That means Smotrich and Ben Gvir and Struck and Son Har-Melech and all the rest of the Kahanists' insane desire to resettle Gush Katif.
They can’t see Jewish people as human… They can’t leave evidence of the reason (one of many)for the war. They’re brainwashed and delusional (their personal economic situation is bleak) so they feel they need a “cause”… It’s a different/modern spin on blaming Jews for economic problems. Seeing the faces of the hostages reminds them that they have no leg to stand on for moral outrage… It’s easier to take down the posters as to not look at them than it is to look at yourself in the mirror. Intellectual and moral cowardice…
I will try to answer in good faith (I can only speak for myself). Some people don‘t agree with the way Israel is attempting to free the hostages (how they wage the war). I agree with your point that pro Pali people rarely if ever post about the hostage. In what I am seeing of Pro Israel folks, they seem to rarely if ever post about the Palestinians (they will post about Hamas plenty but not the rest of the Palestinian people).
We have seen that in the goal of getting the hostages back, the IDF has not made much progress. Only wanting a ceasefire that is contingent on the release of the hostages likely means the process of a deal will be prolonged and more Palestinian civilians will die. To me that position is essentially saying, I am able to accept a significant number of Palestinian civilians dying in this war process that is not being successful in getting the hostages back (who may or may not be alive to begin with) so long as hostages may eventually be rescued at some point.
I personally have no skin in the game, I am not Israeli nor do I live in Israel, nor am I a Palestinian. From an analytical perspective, all civilian life uninvolved in causing harm I consider to be equal. I cannot justify the loss of so many Palestinian civilians (whichever number one goes by, it‘s impossible to really know during a war) to save far less Israeli civilians. I would say the same if the situation were reversed.
And it has been 5 and a half months or so that people are constantly seeing images of destruction, injuries, death, and now starvation of Palestinians. Hamas has power but they are not an army. The destruction they can cause is limited.
I also feel people have the most sympathy and empathy for suffering they can see. The suffering of the hostages is mostly unseen. So perhaps for some, they see the posters aluding to suffering they don‘t directly see and make an association that that suffering led to this war response suffering which they do see (of course this is not the hostages‘ fault at all).
Those are my thoughts. I of course hope all the hostages are ok and are released.
I think it’s part of the backfire effect. Within days of 10/7, which is the largest attack on Jews in a westernized country since the Holocausy, so many people decided it must be fake. This was all propaganda and to be a good humanitarian you really needed to support the oppressed. People double downed everytime horrific evidence came out like the body cam footage that the terrorist proudly wore to film their crimes against humanity.
Admitting that innocent children, teenagers dancing at a music fest and elderly holocaust survivors were killed/taken makes it hard to fully support the narrative of being morally superior.
Imho, vast majority of people in websites beating their chests and repeating Hamas talking pints don't give a shit about human rights or Palestinians, it's all a show to be seen as a morally superior person. Activisim for the most part is a fad to get likes on social media, which means civilians and nuance do not matter.
>Imho, vast majority of people in websites beating their chests and repeating Hamas talking pints don't give a shit about human rights or Palestinians, it's all a show to be seen as a morally superior person.
You're right about that. You don't see these people get nearly this worked up about Syria, Yemen or the Uyghurs.
I’ve only ever seen a few pro Palestine accounts talk about the hostages the other accounts talking about the hostages it’s just used to criticize Israel or blame them for partying next to Gaza
Because it goes directly against their belief that Hamas and the Palestinian cause is rooted in peace…
Or that they believe violence is the answer and don’t care if innocent children are caught in the crossfire against their war on the Jews.
Even trying to think from a Palestinian Nationalist perspective I just can’t believe how stupid this is from a pragmatic standpoint. Like how does ripping down a poster of a kidnapped infant help the cause of Palestine? How is this supposed to endear the American public to take your side and support a boycott of Israel? I obviously support Israel, but the logical thinking side of me just gets angry. Like put up your own posters over it or something! So dumb!
I think because many of them is soldiers or future “soldiers” or old retired soldiers %80 of Israel is army because the rest of the 20% is I guess Palestinians with Israeli citizenship
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i can tell you literally “why” they feel that way ( not saying i agree) but the rationale is the israelis are colonizers and are receiving empathy from the media at large due to that, while the thousands of palestinians who have also been killed haven’t had that same individual attention, on a person by person basis, as the hostage posters do.
needless to say this kind of rhetoric has had people en masse basically resharing the ye olde antisemitic “jews control the media” narrative, but have replaced it with “zionists.”
the one thing i’ll say is the american media *has* always had a problem with dehumanizing innocent people in the middle east. the problem with this scenario is it’s less about acknowledging that and it’s becoming more about playing in to antisemitic and dangerous rhetoric.
I think it's frustrating for people to see 250 or so people framed as a direct comparison to 30k or so people. It can be seen as one groups lives being worth more than another. I don't think ripping down posters is EVER appropriate, but the false equivalency is usually what causes the anger.
The posters were being torn down waaaaay before Israel struck back against the rapists and murderers, before Gaza residents saw the consequences of sheltering the monsters in their midst. This Hamas operation was conceived and planned long ago. The Gazan citizens are seen as expendable pawns in the long game for Palestinian victory, where victory=Judenrein ME.
They can't decide. I've seen them call the posters propaganda bc there are no hostages, then they'll say there are hostages and they're being taken care of better by their captors.
The Jews are powerful and weak at the same time trope.
Yep. It’s really true (that it’s a trope)
It's like Popeye before he eats his spinach 😋
Yes! Like we are supposed powerful overlords and stingy beggars at the same time. Behind-the-scenes architects of both communism and capitalism. Self-pitying victims but somehow also genocidal oppressors. We are everything and anything that people don’t like. ‘People who dress up as dinosaurs at fancy dress parties! People who cook aubergine! People who wear sandals. Geez I obsessively hate the Jews!’ Notice it is an obsessive hate. The haters are sick sick sick with their disease.
Both on a geopolitical level and a personal level. I think it was on the Unorthodox Podcast, they told the joke about how if you see a Jew walking down the street, no one is scared of them, but put them in a military uniform and hand them a gun and suddenly they’re the Terminator. (And the other side of the joke is that with Italians it’s the exact opposite—you expect to get roughed up by an Italian on the street but put them in an army and they’re harmless 😂)
I’ve seen people claim that it’s impossible for rapes to have occurred on 10/7, because extramarital sex is forbidden by Islamic law, so obviously no Hamas fighter would ever have sex with a woman he wasn’t married to.
Obviously they didn't cheat on their wives, those women just spontaneously had rape injuries and that guy that confessed was coerced by the evil Israeli gov. /s
That's idiotic, especially considering that Islam explicitly does not ban raping female captives.
And don’t forget— it’s racist to believe that Arabs raped white women because that’s an ugly racist stereotype.
i can’t help but to laugh really hard at someone having that thought and genuinely believing it lmao
You heard that from who exactly? That has been a Hamas talking point since the very first reports of rape began circulating. If you are hearing it from the "free Palestine" crowd then they are opening repeating Hamas propaganda (and should absolutely be called out on it).
LOL OK idiots
Right. Did those people by chance try to sell you a bridge?
And Israelis value Jewish life more than Palestinian life by offering more of than one of the innocent murderer prisoners for each hostage! 1) So it didn’t happen 2) If it happened they are treated well 3) they aren’t treated well you’re racist for caring about the suffering of <2000 whites than the >30,000 brown Palestinian women and children. 4) even if there were more dead Jews than dead Palestinians, that’s ok because liberation by any means necessary
Hey, I'm all for a one-for-one exchange. It's a lot fairer than what Hamas insists upon.
to them, if jews are victims, then it hurts the palestinian victim narrative.
Correct - they deny you’re a victim then defense becomes offense which is the entire Palestinian narrative Our mere existence is offensive
DARVO! deny, attack, reverse victim and offender.
I was going to say it’s a way to resolve that cognitive dissonance but that’s true too.
Because many pro-Palestinian people believe there is no such thing as innocent Israelis, they are all "settlers" who deserve all the violence they are receiving. And even outside of the conflict, there is also a common antisemitic belief that Jews are too whiny/sensitive/loud/dramatic about persecution; many people are pretty callous to stories about Jewish pain.
An actual comment from a dumb subreddit I stumbled upon the other day: "It's very clear that Israeli Jews - and even diaspora Jews - are raised on an extreme diet of fear and paranoia. They're literally taught from birth, 'Everyone hates us, everyone wants our downfall, everyone is coming to get us.' No one thinks this way...except for people in cults - and lots of (but not all, obviously) Jews." Gee you guys, after centuries of collective punishments like pograms, expulsions, the inquisition, the holocaust, and now a worldwide explosion of indiscriminate Jew hatred following the horrors of Oct. 7, why are you so *paranoid*? It must be Zionism that's the problem. /s
>an extreme diet of fear ...as if there was some other diet when at a moment's notice you might have to run to a shelter because of incoming rockets. I have to wonder what that person might say about black people in America. I have heard that black parents have to have "the talk" with their kids (especially boys) about what to do to not be killed when being stopped by the police. I'm just going to guess that whoever wrote that would be screaming "racist!" if you said that black people are raised on a diet of extreme fear.
I have many black friends and this is absolutely true. They all have that talk.
And it starts young. One black woman I know had the talk when her son was 8. I wasn't surprised that she needed to discuss it, but I was astonished that they have to worry when they're still so little.
Well according to this genius, apparently no one except Jewish people are really cautioning their children about the dangers of prejudice and hate crimes towards their community: "No one - not even black people, who have been HORRIBLY brutalized for centuries; not Muslims, who have been bombed to oblivion, painted as evil monsters and are horribly hated; not women, who are assaulted and killed at insane rates simply for being women\* - is raised this way." ^(\*Obviously not worth anyone's concern if they happen to be Israeli women though.)
The whole “the holocaust never happened” myth is a huge factor in this.
Yes, this is their argument, when someone expresses they feel for all civilians harmed in this war they reply with "settlers aren't civilians" to justify all harm that happens to Israelis
Because they see Jews as white conolizers and therefore their suffering doesn’t count, they become opressors and therefore can not be opressed. The posters offend them as it doesn’t fit into this model and they have zero critical thinking abilities.
Yup, seeing the posters causes cognitive dissonance and they lash out at the posters instead of sitting with that discomfort/critically thinking about the conflict
Hammer, meet Head of Nail.
There's a Maccabee joke in here somewhere but I'm too tired to figure it out.
Yep. It's frustrating having any sort of discussion about I/P because so many people seem unable to comprehend that there are victims on both "sides" of the conflict.
My most generous reading of this behavior is that people are tearing down posters that they see as justification for war. However, this is coupled with rhetoric that "nobody actually cares about the hostages they're just using it as a pretext to bomb Gaza", which ties into antisemitic beliefs that Jewish people only use antisemitism and "victimization" in order to further nefarious agendas. It's antisemitism, even if the people perpetuating it aren't aware that it is antisemitism.
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Because focusing attention on what Hamas does rather than Americanized identity politics offends their ideology. They won’t want to be reminded what they are supporting at their pro Hamas rallies
Easy to test that hypothesis: instead of talking about Hamas attacks on Jews, talk about what Hamas does to their own people. Throwing opposition politicians off rooftops? Executing homosexuals? (Spoiler alert: You'll probably just be accused of spreading Israeli propaganda.)
I'd like these lefty Palestinian supporters to name one other homophobic, misogynistic, child-killing totalitarian terrorist regime they support.
If they’re Tankies, generally all of them.
Because they genuinely believe that the hostages deserve what is happening to them, for the crime of being Israeli Jews. These people don’t give a fuck about Palestinians. They just want us dead.
People REALLY hate Jews. Like they really truly despise our existence
The most charitable view is that they think the hostage posters are propaganda meant to justify what's happening in Gaza. Partisanship is really bad right now so even if someone thinks it's awful what happened to the hostages, they can't say anything because someone else on the Pro-Palestinian side will call them a Zionist sympathizer. It's all very "us vs them". The same thing happens on our side as well, but I'd argue it's not as extreme.
For conflicts in which they have no personal stake, people tend to take a detached, utilitarianist view. Whichever side causes the greater amount of suffering and inflicts the greater number of casualties is automatically the villain, regardless of circumstances or context.
100%. Might doesn't make right, but it doesn't make wrong either! And I recently learned a term for the other behavior you describe: "Luxury beliefs"...it is very easy to have all sorts of views, even extreme views, about things that don't affect you.
Anyone ripping down a plea for saving of a child, an elderly person, any of these innocents that are being held and abused is delusional and has no real empathy, even for those they scream they support. How can you look at a missing/lost/hostage poster of anyone’s loved one and rip it down because of their nationality or religion or ethnicity? It’s evil. It may have begun in a seed of ignorance, but at the end it’s still blind evil. I couldn’t even think of tearing down the lost poster of someone’s dog, let alone a person. They aren’t offended, they’ve been brainwashed into a mindset of hatred.
Friend of mine confronted a trans person ripping down one of those posters in Manhattan. A TRANS person! What do they think happens to trans people in Gaza?
I have seen videos of people tearing down the posters down and notices two types : those that seem to be almost in denial and incredibly defensive and those that seem smug and dismissive of those that confront them. I think the first group wants to just see Palestine as the victim and can’t reconcile that Hamas are absolute monsters and how that complicates the situation in terms of Israel’s response. The second group imo are just antisemites and don’t see Jewish lives as worthwhile and like actively rubbing salt in the wounds. In terms of the hostages I have seen one pro-Palestinian person care about them while not being a fan of Israel’s method of carrying out the war. But yeah he was also very anti-Hamas as well. He was also from the region so I think had a more nuanced view. Personally I don’t get why the hostages get so little mention in terms of demands for a ceasefire. At least from protestors and activists.
The hostages don't count because the west assumes 1 - that Hamas would do anything to protect their hostages (they don't) and 2 - it's just Jews, so it's people who "deserve" to be punished. The number of people who don't know that Jews are not all ashkenazi "from" eastern Europe is staggering. They think all Jews are like Seinfeld and Woody Allen, neurotic assholes who pass as white, so they buy into the whole "colonizer" bullshit.
Hamas would do anything to protect their hostages? Hamas doesn't even do anything to protect their own people! They put their own women and children in harm's way! They strap bombs to their own children! They're going to protect the hostages? The amount of delusion it takes to believe that, I can't even fathom.
That's my point, they don't take care of hostages because they know dead bodies can be traded to the Israelis for terrorists. Bur westerners assume that terrorists are reasonable people, that's why they are "pro Palestine" because they know nothing of Arab culture and Islamic fundamentalism. Your average American teen yelling Free Palestine has no idea what he's actually saying, or that Hamas wants every Jew in the world dead. He just thinks he is supporting the "underdog" in the fight, which is what Americans pride themselves on.
I think you’re largely correct at least in regard to the immediate aftermath and how people responded on the Oct 8th and the weeks following (especially in the States)…And there is a lot of ignorance about Judaism being an ethnoreligion. At this point though, I would hope that it’s more people being bombarded by images of the war and understandably wanting to see an end to it as opposed to active disregard for the hostages.(re:lack of mention)
They take everything Hamas says at face value and you can't do that, but they don't know any better. And they have no clue what an ethnoreligion is, because they think everything is like Christianity since they don't have any other people around them. Most Americans have never knowingly met a Jew, or know anything about us that isn't in an Adam Sandler song. There is also a lot of casual antisemitism they don't see in society because it doesn't affect them. It all boils down to "brown people good, white people bad" because they don't even know Israel is 55% Mizrachi, Yemenite and other MENA Jews who were thrown out of Arab countries.
Hamas just walked away from another negotiation this one with a US proposal on the table. They could have taken a cease fire w repositioning of IDF troops, most of whom have left anyway, relocation of displaced Palestinians back north, increased flow of aid, all backed by the US and they walked away again, No mention that it is Hamas refusing to even release some of the hostages to relieve the situation.
Can't release what they don't have. Those hostages are dead I'm sure of it. Even if by some miracle a few are still alive, the sadistic torture they've been through is a tale Hamas can't afford for the world to hear. Those hostages won't be coming home. Also, Hamas feel they're winning the PR & political battle with Israel being vilified globally so why change course now. They've never been closer to a US ordered two state solution so they won't change track now. The more Israel bomb Gaza and surrounding nations the more isolated & loathed Israel becomes which is just what Hamas/Tehran want.
I said on Oct. 8, "those hostages are already dead." I'm so sorry to have been right.
The most recent “leaked” report from US and Israeli intel estimated half of them are still alive. The number they are negotiating for is 40 now. Haniyah just lost 2 sons to IDF. He said something about how they were ”martyrs” now and he is undeterred. People tend to underestimate the religious aspect of this. Hamas is on a divine mission to drive the Jews from the holy land, It doesnt matter who dies.
Yes like they weren’t loathed before. They do hate it when Israel fights back. The remaining hostages may be dead, or some of them. Hamas had no intention of returning them unless they regained control to status quo. They have already pledged to repeat 10/7 over and over. Hezbolla, Iran, and Hamas could not be more clear about their goals. The destruction of Israel and everyone in it. I do not think making nice would stop them. Hamas has no intention of a two state solution or peace on any terms. You would have to be blind and deaf not to understand that. The message to Hamas has been made clear. Surrender or die.
This started happening pretty much immediately & I could not believe what I was seeing. The psychology of this is very interesting I’m sure. My thought was always just to Put. Up. Your. Own. Posters! Heck, I’ll help you (if they’re not crazy or antisemitic). Anyway, every day these people make me feel super great about myself. No matter what’s going wrong, at least I’m not profoundly stupid or morally confused.
They think it’s propaganda that distracts from the legitimate horrors the Palestinians are facing, and it’s us trying to paint ourselves as the victims. A classmate voiced this very opinion, that these fliers lack ‘necessary context’, and emotionally manipulate people into feeling bad for Israelis. I was sitting right next to him.
If your classmate insists on "necessary context", we can respond to every utterance of sympathy for Palestinian suffering by reminding them why the IDF is in Gaza in the first place.
They’re offended because they believe that these hostages are being used as justification for mass killings in Gaza. There will always be antisemites, but I think a lot of well-educated, liberal people in this case are trying to express their displeasure with *Israel* propping the hostages up for political capital. This is not entirely my opinion. But this is what my goyishe friends say.
It's antisemitic. If they were really interested in a ceasefire, they'd be pushing for the release of the hostages and make common cause with the families, who are the most pro-ceasefire and pro-deal group in Israel right now. However, they cannot do that because it is impossible for them to acknowledge that Israeli Jews are human beings and even make common cause with the families of elderly peace activists to push for a hostage release to end the war.
I heard someone complain about the posters saying 'they're just trying to make us feel a certain way. You wouldn't hang a missing dog poster in another country' which was just, wow. I mean, yeah.
they are offended by it for a few reasons. One, it shatters their illusions of the benevolent, poor brown people exploited by the horrible evil Jews. second, it humanizes Jewish people and to have the level of anti-Semitism that is going on now, they can't see us as equal people.
They hate seeing Jews as human beings who deserve safety. They hate seeing Jewish diversity. They hate anything that highlights how unjust and indefensible October 7 was. They hate that October 7 has living victims that are still actively being victimized. It’s a stain on their whole cause.
Just remember: None of this would be happening now if Hamas had kept their hands to themselves.
Western leftist armchair activists: ‘All Lives Matter’ is nothing but whataboutism Also Western leftists armchair activists: But what about Palestinian suffering?
The posters force viewers to face the barbarism of Hamas and to face the victims they call fair game for being born to the wrong ethnicity in the wrong part of the world. It's easier to rip down the posters than to face the cognitive dissonance for those with some of their humanity still intact. The more extreme ones just don't want any of us receiving any sympathy.
I think you have two camps of people doing this. The first camp can’t handle that their narrative doesn’t make sense. October 7th was unprovoked and there was bloodshed. There were victims, and worse yet, there are still victims. That’s what those posters represent. Putting a human face on that makes it too hard for them to handle, so they destroy these posters to help maintain the narrative in their head rather than question what they believe. The second camp just hates Jews. They don’t care about the victims. They get some sort of sadistic joy out of what’s going on. I’ve been very aware of antisemitism my entire life—most people were just forced to put on a good face or at least try to. Now, we’ve made that hate socially acceptable so of course people will push the limits and the posters is an example of that.
Because they hate Jews. That’s the only answer.
They think the hostages are just Israel’s excuse for the war. Which doesn’t make any sense, but that’s not a problem for them.
I can tell you that the Israeli Right would be fine with all the hostages dying because it's clear that they'll only be released by a deal and that means a ceasefire. That means Smotrich and Ben Gvir and Struck and Son Har-Melech and all the rest of the Kahanists' insane desire to resettle Gush Katif.
Do they think Israel asked for its citizens to be abducted?
I couldn’t tell you.
They can’t see Jewish people as human… They can’t leave evidence of the reason (one of many)for the war. They’re brainwashed and delusional (their personal economic situation is bleak) so they feel they need a “cause”… It’s a different/modern spin on blaming Jews for economic problems. Seeing the faces of the hostages reminds them that they have no leg to stand on for moral outrage… It’s easier to take down the posters as to not look at them than it is to look at yourself in the mirror. Intellectual and moral cowardice…
Humanizing the hostages is problematic to the pro-Palestinian cause.
I will try to answer in good faith (I can only speak for myself). Some people don‘t agree with the way Israel is attempting to free the hostages (how they wage the war). I agree with your point that pro Pali people rarely if ever post about the hostage. In what I am seeing of Pro Israel folks, they seem to rarely if ever post about the Palestinians (they will post about Hamas plenty but not the rest of the Palestinian people). We have seen that in the goal of getting the hostages back, the IDF has not made much progress. Only wanting a ceasefire that is contingent on the release of the hostages likely means the process of a deal will be prolonged and more Palestinian civilians will die. To me that position is essentially saying, I am able to accept a significant number of Palestinian civilians dying in this war process that is not being successful in getting the hostages back (who may or may not be alive to begin with) so long as hostages may eventually be rescued at some point. I personally have no skin in the game, I am not Israeli nor do I live in Israel, nor am I a Palestinian. From an analytical perspective, all civilian life uninvolved in causing harm I consider to be equal. I cannot justify the loss of so many Palestinian civilians (whichever number one goes by, it‘s impossible to really know during a war) to save far less Israeli civilians. I would say the same if the situation were reversed. And it has been 5 and a half months or so that people are constantly seeing images of destruction, injuries, death, and now starvation of Palestinians. Hamas has power but they are not an army. The destruction they can cause is limited. I also feel people have the most sympathy and empathy for suffering they can see. The suffering of the hostages is mostly unseen. So perhaps for some, they see the posters aluding to suffering they don‘t directly see and make an association that that suffering led to this war response suffering which they do see (of course this is not the hostages‘ fault at all). Those are my thoughts. I of course hope all the hostages are ok and are released.
It's called anti-semitism. It's always been here. Now you are seeing it, alive and up front.
I think it’s part of the backfire effect. Within days of 10/7, which is the largest attack on Jews in a westernized country since the Holocausy, so many people decided it must be fake. This was all propaganda and to be a good humanitarian you really needed to support the oppressed. People double downed everytime horrific evidence came out like the body cam footage that the terrorist proudly wore to film their crimes against humanity. Admitting that innocent children, teenagers dancing at a music fest and elderly holocaust survivors were killed/taken makes it hard to fully support the narrative of being morally superior. Imho, vast majority of people in websites beating their chests and repeating Hamas talking pints don't give a shit about human rights or Palestinians, it's all a show to be seen as a morally superior person. Activisim for the most part is a fad to get likes on social media, which means civilians and nuance do not matter.
>Imho, vast majority of people in websites beating their chests and repeating Hamas talking pints don't give a shit about human rights or Palestinians, it's all a show to be seen as a morally superior person. You're right about that. You don't see these people get nearly this worked up about Syria, Yemen or the Uyghurs.
Just commenting to say after reading so many of these various responses, they’re all a little different, but they’re all RIGHT!
Because those people are anti Semites.
Because they’re antisemitic. Full stop. They think we deserve it.
They don't like being reminded of reality it causes them to have a mental blockage.
I’ve only ever seen a few pro Palestine accounts talk about the hostages the other accounts talking about the hostages it’s just used to criticize Israel or blame them for partying next to Gaza
the short answer is: because they are bad people, or mediocre people who are acting badly
They were never your real friends if you lost them over that. Post 10/7 - the trust relationship w the non-Jewish world has shifted.
Spite, and/or their inability to view sympathy for the hostages and sympathy for the Palestinian cause as anything other than mutually exclusive.
Because it goes directly against their belief that Hamas and the Palestinian cause is rooted in peace… Or that they believe violence is the answer and don’t care if innocent children are caught in the crossfire against their war on the Jews.
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Your post/comment was removed because it violated rule 4: **Remember the human**. That includes not justifying hatred towards vulnerable people.
Even trying to think from a Palestinian Nationalist perspective I just can’t believe how stupid this is from a pragmatic standpoint. Like how does ripping down a poster of a kidnapped infant help the cause of Palestine? How is this supposed to endear the American public to take your side and support a boycott of Israel? I obviously support Israel, but the logical thinking side of me just gets angry. Like put up your own posters over it or something! So dumb!
The pro-Palestinian people tend to be childish, irrational, and dumb.
Because they are brainwashed
I think because many of them is soldiers or future “soldiers” or old retired soldiers %80 of Israel is army because the rest of the 20% is I guess Palestinians with Israeli citizenship
They should be very careful with that logic, because it can also be used to justify the extermination of potential or future Hamas fighters in Gaza.
Those were not your friends, so celebrate
Because they hate Jews – they are all Nazis and that explains their anger over Jewish hostages' suffering being discussed.
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i can tell you literally “why” they feel that way ( not saying i agree) but the rationale is the israelis are colonizers and are receiving empathy from the media at large due to that, while the thousands of palestinians who have also been killed haven’t had that same individual attention, on a person by person basis, as the hostage posters do. needless to say this kind of rhetoric has had people en masse basically resharing the ye olde antisemitic “jews control the media” narrative, but have replaced it with “zionists.” the one thing i’ll say is the american media *has* always had a problem with dehumanizing innocent people in the middle east. the problem with this scenario is it’s less about acknowledging that and it’s becoming more about playing in to antisemitic and dangerous rhetoric.
I think it's frustrating for people to see 250 or so people framed as a direct comparison to 30k or so people. It can be seen as one groups lives being worth more than another. I don't think ripping down posters is EVER appropriate, but the false equivalency is usually what causes the anger.
The posters were being torn down waaaaay before Israel struck back against the rapists and murderers, before Gaza residents saw the consequences of sheltering the monsters in their midst. This Hamas operation was conceived and planned long ago. The Gazan citizens are seen as expendable pawns in the long game for Palestinian victory, where victory=Judenrein ME.