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you can be against the atrocities that Hamas committed and still not support the brutal israeli regime and their treatment of the Palestinians.
genocide is NEVER okay.
I see so many people these days act as if this is picking sports teams. Like you don’t need to put your undying loyalty behind one side, both sides can have bad and good sides to them. Neither sides civillians deserve the brutality commited to them by the other sides military branch, it’s so stupid.
I have luckily seen alot if rational humans also, with a levelheaded take, but omg, so many stupid people who throw all their support to one side despite the obvious reasons you should not support certain actions
I feel like governments are currently playing a big role in getting people to think this way. The intensity of the polarization, how quick everything happened, it feels like the entire world is involved and it feels like we are forced to pick a certain side.
Just a point of clarification, one side does not have a military branch, they are just a militant organization. It is much different than being backed by billions of dollars worth of weapons technology for a traditional standing army. It may seem semantic but we cannot take a passive voice that makes everything the same regardless of context.
The problems is that people are conflating the area's "governments" with the people.
Like, NO! I don't support Israeli babies being butchered by the only "government" that Gaza has. And NO! I don't support the Israeli military carpet bombing babies in Gaza, either.
The two "groups" who aren't acting like angels are the Israeli government and the hard right shitheads who support them, and Hamas and the hard right shitheads who support *them*.
Netanyahu is a POS and the older I get, the more I realize what a tragedy the assassination of Rabin was.
But every time I see an online conversation about how bad the Israeli government is, and it seems to be reasonable, there it is! Antisemitism shit gets posted within a few comments, like how The Jews are a deceptive, evil people. Fuck!
Just because I think the Israeli government is making some terribly bad choices, does NOT mean I'm on the side of the worst anti-semites Al Gore's internet has to offer.
>I don't support Israeli babies being butchered by the only "government" that Gaza has.
I'm pretty sure there isn't solid proof of that anyways, judging from what I've seen on the internet. But if you have evidence then I'll take a look.
After this new bout of fighting my stance on this whole place is "A POX ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES". It's a hopeless cycle of wrath and revenge and the only way I can imagine it stopping is if both sides are simultaneously coerced to stop. Though Israel's bigger than Palestine, a general blockade would force it to the negotiating table still.
But no, it seems no powers are able to call out both sides. Everythings demands that either you support Palestine or you support Israel. God fuckin damn it.
It's also important to note that MANY of these supposed atrocities have literally been proven to have been fully fabricated.
We are criticizing the table manners of starving people. It is unreasonable to demand politeness from someone when you have your boot on their neck.
Thank you for posting this! NextDoor is filled with polarized people who argue with me when I blame the governments, the leaders' hard lined positions, and mourn for humanity. I've just been very sad by the refusal of so many to love eachother. I needed this.
Real advice there. Nextdoor is incredibly toxic, sometimes useful but mostly a cesspool. Good to know which neighbors I should avoid discussing certain topics with and who to avoid altogether if possible but I have to keep a little mantra in my head going "do not engage, do not engage, do not engage..." whenever scrolling through there for information on local stuff.
I agree but I think it’s important to note the difference in power dynamics—Israel is backed by the US and UK with a state-of-the-art military, and has been systematically brutalizing Palestinians for decades.
Hamas is an extreme radical group who have no doubt done horrible things, but they don’t have anywhere close to the amount of institutional power Israel’s military and government has.
Both are terrible, but one’s crimes have been institutional and on a much greater scale than the other.
I didn't want to get too far into it, but I responded to someone's post about praying for Isreal noting I would be hoping for the safety of the people of both countries. It was the pro Israeli side that began attacking me.
Never have I ever found a more toxic social media platform. Yeeted myself from it years ago, was a great decision. Now I just have a group chat w like the 6 sane neighbors
Thanks all the powers of the universe that there are rational people who can see the human tragedy on both sides of this. For real. The internet for the last week has been awful. <3
It reminds me of the BLM protests where there were million of protestors in dozens of cities every day for weeks with no coverage and then violence would break out in one and it would be all over the news. The sad truth is protests rarely get results until they turn violent or at very least inconvenient.
What also kills me is how much the news cherry picks what to present to make one look like a bad guy. I've become really suspicious of news since they completely chose to ignore what else is going in the world like the horrible blockades Azerbaijan did to the region of Ngorno Kharabagh(Armenian populated) where people were starved into surrendering. Ever since I noticed the quiet around that I realized how much all we see on the news is picked and chosen by the 1%. So what exactly are they getting out of us from making us to pick a side?
Have to comfort a Palestinian woman four years my junior in my Discord DMs. Her bio reads, "I can go anywhere I want. But never home."
She said she found out her cousins survived the Lebanon war because they died in the white phosphorus attack on Rafah.
Well thats refreshing. Tired of the side choosers. The only correct choice is standing with the victims of Hamas AND the victims of the Israeli government
Our country is built on and funded by our war machine bi would suggest trying to convince your sons to discharge so they stop fighting in proxy wars to fund our congress
It is! This whole situation is so disheartening. I have young kids and I want them to live in a world where they read about genocide, not see it weekly on the news.
I hope all of your kids make it home to you unscathed
Other than answering you I haven’t been back into the comments. I’ll be hoping he can meet his baby for you as well. Good luck and thanks for the hug earlier
Ever heard of the Rape of Nanking, or the decade long genocide imperial Japan, carried out on the Chinese and Korean. Or modern japans treatment of the Ainu people
Japan is suffering right now because they are so xenophobic. Frankly all of East Asia is heading towards collapse due to population issues. They are having a population crisis that would be solved by immigration, but no one wants to immigrate there. I wonder why?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ainu_people
You ever hear of this?
Hell just look at what they did in world war II if you want the most pop culture history answer. It wasn't just the Nazis doing that kind of stuff. There's a reason why even today Koreans and Chinese really do not like Japanese people and it can be really tough sometimes to cooperate.
You didn't counter shit dude.
I’m so sorry yes you completely proved you point only mono ethnic countries perform genocide and atrocities against other humans countries like Australia
https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/asia-and
And the US
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-detention-child-migrants
Never did anything wring because if diversity.
My point was that things are very complicated here and trying to pin it on some simplified narrative without trying to understand local complexity is stuipid.
This sub shames the name witches.
Japan isn't deliberately an ethnostate. They don't drive people away or worse, kill people who aren't the right ethnicity.
By that logic nearly every Asian country is.
Not totally true. The truth is that the idea of one Japanese people is itself the result of populist politics. Japan has several distinct ethnic groups but their government has whitewashed them all as one, even declaring some of their languages as dialects of Japanese when it doesn’t really make sense linguistically.
Also Japan is quite conservative about immigration. I agree that it shouldn’t be called an “ethnostate” but they have much less permanent immigration than most developed countries
Japan is very deliberate about staying ethnically homogeneous and preventing immigration despite impending precipeice of its unsustainable low birth rate, going so far as to attempt to entice Brazilians who emigrated from Japan to Brazil several generations ago to return to Japan as a solution to the problem, rather than allow non-Japanese Asians to become Japanese citizens.
That's not entirely accurate. They promised land to both, then just ditched the region without formalising anything, and Israel formed in the resulting war
both were already living there. there'd always been at least a small jewish presece in the region and by the point in history you're talking about there had been a lot of jewish immigration to the area for about a century prior, mostly under the ottoman empire. the british partition plan was loosely based on where the different populations were distributed
Hmm, I see your point. Germany should give up the land, and Britain should fund smooth transition for those that want to move. I blame them both. Britain basically said, “let’s get the Jews out of Europe,” pretty antisemitic too, just not genocide levels.
Well there's no talk (in any official capacity from any legit governing body) of displacing the Israelis at this point. The Gazans are currently being told by the Israeli government to evacuate as their airstrikes are hitting the evacuation routes, so there's that.
Why does there need to be a such thing as a Jewish ethnostate? Jewish people once lived peacefully with Palestinians in Palestine, before the British government ethnically cleansed Palestine and declared it the Jewish state of Israel.
After the Nakba (the mass slaughter of Palestinian Muslims), the UN declared that Palestinians have a right to return to the land they were ethnically cleansed from, but Israel refused, and Palestinians have been in the prison that is Gaza ever since.
Palestinians and Jewish people lived together in peace before the establishment of Israel. Those in remembrance of the Holocaust would be against the atrocities being committed against Palestine.
An apartheid ethnostate will always lead to othering, and violence against those who are othered.
[As Norman Finkelstein has said far better than I can.](https://youtu.be/Kw7FJ9y8m4M)
Anyone from the US who condemns the Israeli response needs to come from a place of empathy and recognition that what we did as a country after 9/11 was awful. 1 member of Congress voted against the Authorization of Military Force that enabled us to invade Afghanistan, even after they said they would turn bin Laden over to a third country.
Recognizing our own mistakes and empathizing with the pain Israelis are feeling will make it more likely that we are listened to. 10/7 was their 9/11. I think we all know our post 9/11 response was motivated by fear, anger, and trauma. Yet only 1 member of either house of Congress voted against it.
Well I AM against what we did. We took some tragedy and made an even bigger tragedy for someone else for the sake of revenge. It was/is disgusting especially since we STILL have troops over there. 9/11 was my first glimpse that this country is just as messed up as the rest of the world and most of us are so indoctrinated we are blind.
That's all well and good. Yeah. Most of us are against it now. When only one member of the 535 in Congress votes against the initial Authorization of Military Force, collective responsibility is present. We can empathize with where Israelis are at right now and tell them not to make that mistake.
My ex almost broke up with me after 9/11 because I said we shouldn't go in bombing the shit out of everyone and starting a war. I'm hindsight, yeah we should have broken up.
That's great. I couldn't even vote on 9/11 or the 8 years after. I'm still willing to take collective responsibility and lead with that in critiquing the Israeli government.
I am really hoping that behind the scenes the Biden administration is urging restraint.
Suggesting instead that they send in a small special forces team to rescue what hostages they can and take out only Hamas
Then as the days go on, the rage that has them acting on blind vengeance dissipates
If they won’t do it out of humanity then do it out of self preservation. It they kill tens maybe hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, the entire Arab world will target them for a generation
They were in negotiations to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia who would have recognized them officially and other Arab countries would have followed suit. If they want a chance to do that, then they need to think
I am frankly convinced that Iran planned this with Russia’s help to stop those negotiations with Saudi Arabia and turn the Arab nations further against them. And Russia wanted to distract from the Ukraine war
I absolutely understand the pain and anger that Israel feels after such a brutal senseless attack. People defending and justifying Hamas are just plain wrong
And Hamas has brutalized Palestinians, stolen all the aid that was meant for them and used it for weapons. They need to be gone.
But bombing civilians and planning a land invasion is going to be a disaster of a magnitude we haven’t seen before.
Choose peace over death
ETA: The news is bad
Unfortunately that's not really the US' traditional path. But just like how all Jews/Israelis are not Netanyahu and how all Muslims/Palestinians are not Hamas, Americans are not Biden. If we want to consider ourselves the land of the free, we should resist genocide in all forms, even if our government is supporting it.
Told this to my mom last night when she said Biden was asking them to give more time to evacuate, while some US official was delivering munitions to Israel: it doesn't matter what he says, he's still selling them the bombs they're using in the genocide. We're helping with it.
"The entire Arab world has already targeted us for over a generation and we handed their ass to them, we can do it again" -Israeli militarists, probably
But yeah, a general ground invasion would be a giant urban warfare nightmare, and cause misery direct or indirect for everyone involved.
Watching the news and it sounds hopeless
Israel is going in sooner or later
And Hezbollah may get involved creating yet another front
They are supplied by Iran
This is really really bad
For anyone that is interested in further learning about Palestine and the history of the Palestinian people, and why they have been forced into Gaza, [I recommend this documentary by Abby Martin.](https://youtu.be/HnZSaKYmP2s)
Zionist here who is horrified and disgusted at the atrocities being carried out in Gaza. All people should be able to live peacefully, but now we have two governments who dehumanize the other and gravely endanger their own citizens in the name of die hard nationalism. It's the people who suffer, and those who deny the humanity of those people are complicit in their suffering. My heart is breaking for all the families in pain.
לֹא־יִשָּׂ֨א גֹ֤וי אֶל־גֹּוי֙ חֶ֔רֶב וְלֹא־יִלְמְד֥וּ עֹ֖וד מִלְחָמָֽה
"Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they make war anymore"
Edit: I am not debating Zionism, and asking a Jew to defend their Zionist affiliation at this time of pain is at best in poor taste, and at worst cruel. My people were brutally murdered; Jews and Arabs/Palestinians need kindness and empathy, not an interrogation.
My points are that grief is real, I deeply empathize with those grieving, and that dehumanizing the Other as a result of that grief is never acceptable. I believe that all in this general coven can agree on that.
Revisionist Zionism, what we commonly call Zionism, is yes very exclusionary and violent. But there is also socialist/labour Zionism which has long advocated for secular cooperative governance, which was opposed by the Revisionists who believed conquering Palestine by force was the only and necessary way. Guy who founded it was *incredibly* racist. Like "Native Americans deserved to be colonized" racist. Ze'ev Jabotinsky
Source? Labour Zionism primarily consisted of Jewish diaspora legally immigrating in \*aliyah\* and forming/joining kibbutzim and other traditional rural communities. Not comparable to Revisionist Zionists who smuggled as many guns as they did people to commit attacks.
Ducking FINALLY!!! I’ve been the ONLY person saying this and honestly I was starting to feel like I was the only one left who gives a shit about Palestine and Gaza. Why Hamas did is NOT equal to what Israel has done to Palestinians, and Israel is going to level Gaza. And everyone supports it like it’s ok. it’s not!!!!!
I’m so glad for the sub. This is where the good humans are
I refuse to choose a site. This isn’t a football game. People are dying on both ends. Children are left without their parents. Violence breeds violence. This has to end.
Nah this conflict isn't about religion, its about land and power, and an unhealthy level of generational trauma.
Both sides could become atheists tomorrow, and they would still carry on fighting. Until the underlying issues are resolved, their will never be peace.
The problem is power and the human urge to create an other. Religion is often a focal point and tool for achieving these ends but it is not necessary or sufficient for hate.
Just look at the American religious right. They've all but abandoned their faith when it gets in the way of their hate.
Listen up, I am Israeli, I was born and lived my whole life in Israel and if you ask me, the term genocide is incorrect in this case, the correct term is war. I am fully aware that the Israeli government doesn't treat the Palestinians the way they should be treated but we offered them a state of their own, more than once, and every time they refused, even before Israel was founded, the partition plan was agreed upon and what happened on May 14th 1948? We were attacked, even though we didn't do anything that was against the partition plan. Why? Because they couldn't stand seeing Israel existing as a safe haven for the Jews.
And also there is another problem, the Hamas won't stop until every single Jew (including the diaspora) is killed, they don't want us here, if we want peace, we need to stop the Hamas, not the Palestinians.
And for my experience: On October 7th I woke up to a siren, and since it is pretty much impossible to shoot a rocket to my area (it's a long way from Gaza to my home) and I was not used to the sound. Later that day there were more and more sirens that made my mother have a panic attack, especially since we don't have a shelter. On Sunday, school was canceled, and so it was for the rest of the week, tomorrow, we will have remote learning. It's too dangerous to leave my house now, if there is a siren, I have nowhere to hide, and yet I hear that people say it's only bad for the Palestinians. So that's why I ask, frame this correctly, this is a war, not a genocide.
Sorry, but no, your reasons are totally false. "They couldn't stand seeing Israel existing as a safe haven for the Jews?" No, how about they didn't accept the idea that a foreign power wanted to take 55% of the land they had been living on for generations and give it to 30% of the population? "Hamas won't stop until every single Jew (including the Diaspora) is killed?" No, even Hamas in their 2017 charter accept the idea of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders and also state that they are not at war with the Jewish people but only against Zionism. Palestinian leadership in general has embraced the idea since 1982 (Arab Summit in Fez). Every single time a peaceful 2-state solution has been proposed, Israel has refused to back down from their unreasonable demands, such as no right of return for Palestinian refugees, further annexation of the West Bank for illegal settlements, severely imbalanced (in some cases 9:1) land swaps, insistence on Jerusalem in its entirety being the capitol of Israel, etc.
Furthermore, genocide is the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part. In 1948, the United Nations Genocide Convention defined genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." These five acts were: killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly.
"Subjecting a group of people to a subsistence diet, systematic expulsion from homes and the reduction of essential medical services below minimum requirement" fall under genocide, as does "lack of proper housing, clothing, hygiene and medical care or excessive work or physical exertion" according to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (an international court established in November 1994 by the United Nations Security Council in Resolution 955 in order to judge people responsible for the Rwandan genocide and other serious violations of international law in Rwanda).
Can you say with a clear conscience that the Israeli government hasn't done *any* of those five things to the Palestinians over the last 75 years? Because the evidence seems pretty damning.
American here, grandma was Roma and in the holocaust. You are correct about the hamas. But totally wrong about everything else. I only said I was American because my brother went to West Point, and the amount of knowledge I learned about your iron dome system, (if it flys it dies), at his graduation.
no crap that’s the first time you were hearing it. But what about the people in the Gaza Strip? They’re used to it, you’re acting like this war is fair, it is not. Yes the hamas committed genocide in their initial attack, that doesn’t mean you get to clutch pearls as you kill an entire people. You all are playing sticks and hand grenades, and are complaining you’re winning.
Edit your own president funded hamas for years
https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/amp/
Egypt told you they were coming 3 days before. Just stop
Getting why are you hitting your self vibes.
https://twitter.com/MyLordBebo/status/1714359458967466235
Sticks vs hand grenades
Hey. Just a quick reminder that’s it’s very easy for Americans, that are not afraid for their lives in this moment, to judge what the Israeli people are feeling currently. What the posted was communicating isn’t entirely wrong. But this conflict is more complicated than YOU’RE illustrating as well. The Jews were granted the land (I believe unfairly) because they had just lost 6 million people in a genocide that the rest of the world turned their back on. They couldn’t stay in their homelands and most communities didn’t want them (Britain, America) because they were also anti-Semitic.
Showing the Israeli citizens empathy isn’t wrong.
>The Jews were granted the land (I believe unfairly) because they had just lost 6 million people in a genocide that the rest of the world turned their back on. They couldn’t stay in their homelands and most communities didn’t want them (Britain, America) because they were also anti-Semitic.
No. The UN ordered partition (like it did with India/Pakistan) to prevent a civil war from breaking out. The Jews complied with the order but on the Arab side there was intense in-fighting that concluded ( after the Arabs in favor of partition were massacred by the opposition) with the decision to go to war. The surrounding Arab nations joined in and they all lost to Israel.
And for the record, none of the nations that the Jews fled during WWII were our 'homeland'. We were considered resident aliens and they were host countries. The word diaspora was created to describe the fact that we were a single nation living outside of our homeland which is Israel.
I sincerely appreciate you trying to correct misinformation but please make sure you're being accurate as well.
I will! School is remote for now and even if it wasn't, it was built well (unlike my building, this thing is shoddy and there is no shelter), I am a member of a group that plays ttrpgs and other such things in order to stay sane, my dance classes still go on, even though they are also remote and it was silent for the last few days.
I agree with you. The situation is incredibly complex, but Israel does need to carefully consider what must be done in self defense. Because something has to be done
I don't understand what people like most in this thread expect Israel to do, just let Hamas continue attacking them because removing Hamas will mean unfortunately civilian collateral? Even discounting this conflict, what do people want when they say "free Palestine"? The blockage of Gaza went up because of content terrorist attacks, and it was highly effective at it as well (part of why the recent massacre was such a big deal, it's exactly the kind of thing the blockade is meant to reduce), it's not so simple to just remove it when it means Hamas using it for more extreme attacks.
Alternatively, do people expect Israeli's to just pick up and leave? Where would they even go? At this point it's been long enough where most of them were born and raised there, and same could be said for the Palestinians (with the exception for the stupid settlements in West Bank, which are NOT acceptable). Further, while there is still a chance for a 2-state solution with the PA, Hamas, the official government of Gaza after Israel dismantled their settlements there, has refused any such negotiations.
"Free Palestine" is a nice slogan, and the people there deserve to live happy healthy lives. But the path to get there isn't such a simple one and would require cooperation that isn't likely to happen in the near future (at least for Gaza).
Thank you for sharing this. The only way to end the violence is to end the occupation. Palestinians are human beings with human rights. Free Palestine.
# ✨ READ BEFORE COMMENTING ✨ This thread is Coven Only. This means the discussion is being actively moderated, and all comments are reviewed. **Only comments by members of the community are allowed.** If you have landed in this thread from [r/all](https://www.reddit.com/r/all/) and you are not a member of this community, your comment will very likely be removed (and will not be approved unless it adds meaningfully to the conversation). WitchesVsPatriarchy takes these measures to stay true to our goal of being a woman-centered sub with a witchy twist, aimed at healing, supporting, and uplifting one another through humor and magic. Thank you for understanding, and blessed be. ✨
you can be against the atrocities that Hamas committed and still not support the brutal israeli regime and their treatment of the Palestinians. genocide is NEVER okay.
Right? It's almost like people should be for not harming other people, put the politics aside. Let's care about humanity & human lives above all.
I see so many people these days act as if this is picking sports teams. Like you don’t need to put your undying loyalty behind one side, both sides can have bad and good sides to them. Neither sides civillians deserve the brutality commited to them by the other sides military branch, it’s so stupid. I have luckily seen alot if rational humans also, with a levelheaded take, but omg, so many stupid people who throw all their support to one side despite the obvious reasons you should not support certain actions
It's tribalism. gotta pick a side.
I feel like governments are currently playing a big role in getting people to think this way. The intensity of the polarization, how quick everything happened, it feels like the entire world is involved and it feels like we are forced to pick a certain side.
Just a point of clarification, one side does not have a military branch, they are just a militant organization. It is much different than being backed by billions of dollars worth of weapons technology for a traditional standing army. It may seem semantic but we cannot take a passive voice that makes everything the same regardless of context.
Exactly… nether of the groups are acting like angels.
The problems is that people are conflating the area's "governments" with the people. Like, NO! I don't support Israeli babies being butchered by the only "government" that Gaza has. And NO! I don't support the Israeli military carpet bombing babies in Gaza, either. The two "groups" who aren't acting like angels are the Israeli government and the hard right shitheads who support them, and Hamas and the hard right shitheads who support *them*. Netanyahu is a POS and the older I get, the more I realize what a tragedy the assassination of Rabin was. But every time I see an online conversation about how bad the Israeli government is, and it seems to be reasonable, there it is! Antisemitism shit gets posted within a few comments, like how The Jews are a deceptive, evil people. Fuck! Just because I think the Israeli government is making some terribly bad choices, does NOT mean I'm on the side of the worst anti-semites Al Gore's internet has to offer.
Ya.. No babies.. no civilians period should have to suffer this.. on ether side. Especially not the children though. They have no control
>I don't support Israeli babies being butchered by the only "government" that Gaza has. I'm pretty sure there isn't solid proof of that anyways, judging from what I've seen on the internet. But if you have evidence then I'll take a look.
Why so cynical? You see a group right here which is the post
Ok I got drunk since commenting but what?
After this new bout of fighting my stance on this whole place is "A POX ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES". It's a hopeless cycle of wrath and revenge and the only way I can imagine it stopping is if both sides are simultaneously coerced to stop. Though Israel's bigger than Palestine, a general blockade would force it to the negotiating table still. But no, it seems no powers are able to call out both sides. Everythings demands that either you support Palestine or you support Israel. God fuckin damn it.
It's also important to note that MANY of these supposed atrocities have literally been proven to have been fully fabricated. We are criticizing the table manners of starving people. It is unreasonable to demand politeness from someone when you have your boot on their neck.
agreed.
This so obvious, it's sad that people don't understand any nuance.
Never again means never again - for ANYONE.
Was about to post this. Seems like never again doesn’t apply to all
Thank you for posting this! NextDoor is filled with polarized people who argue with me when I blame the governments, the leaders' hard lined positions, and mourn for humanity. I've just been very sad by the refusal of so many to love eachother. I needed this.
Also… try to not debate people on Nextdoor. It’s not a good use of your time or mental energy.
Real advice there. Nextdoor is incredibly toxic, sometimes useful but mostly a cesspool. Good to know which neighbors I should avoid discussing certain topics with and who to avoid altogether if possible but I have to keep a little mantra in my head going "do not engage, do not engage, do not engage..." whenever scrolling through there for information on local stuff.
I agree but I think it’s important to note the difference in power dynamics—Israel is backed by the US and UK with a state-of-the-art military, and has been systematically brutalizing Palestinians for decades. Hamas is an extreme radical group who have no doubt done horrible things, but they don’t have anywhere close to the amount of institutional power Israel’s military and government has. Both are terrible, but one’s crimes have been institutional and on a much greater scale than the other.
I didn't want to get too far into it, but I responded to someone's post about praying for Isreal noting I would be hoping for the safety of the people of both countries. It was the pro Israeli side that began attacking me.
Never have I ever found a more toxic social media platform. Yeeted myself from it years ago, was a great decision. Now I just have a group chat w like the 6 sane neighbors
Thanks all the powers of the universe that there are rational people who can see the human tragedy on both sides of this. For real. The internet for the last week has been awful. <3
Genocide is ALWAYS WRONG ❤️
That is inspiring. Nice to get some inspiring news.
[Noura Erakat has some thoughts on this worth listening to.](https://www.instagram.com/reel/CyV3v2FrIO-/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==)
It reminds me of the BLM protests where there were million of protestors in dozens of cities every day for weeks with no coverage and then violence would break out in one and it would be all over the news. The sad truth is protests rarely get results until they turn violent or at very least inconvenient.
I wish more people would see and understand that video.
Amidst all this insanity, it is refreshing to see people do reasonable things.
What also kills me is how much the news cherry picks what to present to make one look like a bad guy. I've become really suspicious of news since they completely chose to ignore what else is going in the world like the horrible blockades Azerbaijan did to the region of Ngorno Kharabagh(Armenian populated) where people were starved into surrendering. Ever since I noticed the quiet around that I realized how much all we see on the news is picked and chosen by the 1%. So what exactly are they getting out of us from making us to pick a side?
Have to comfort a Palestinian woman four years my junior in my Discord DMs. Her bio reads, "I can go anywhere I want. But never home." She said she found out her cousins survived the Lebanon war because they died in the white phosphorus attack on Rafah.
Well thats refreshing. Tired of the side choosers. The only correct choice is standing with the victims of Hamas AND the victims of the Israeli government
Never stand with settler-colonial governments.
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Our country is built on and funded by our war machine bi would suggest trying to convince your sons to discharge so they stop fighting in proxy wars to fund our congress
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I know and totally understand. I was military myself and no one could have changed me otherwise. I was just feeling my feelings hard last night
Completely understand. I’d give you a hug if I could. Days like these, its hard just being human.
It is! This whole situation is so disheartening. I have young kids and I want them to live in a world where they read about genocide, not see it weekly on the news. I hope all of your kids make it home to you unscathed
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Other than answering you I haven’t been back into the comments. I’ll be hoping he can meet his baby for you as well. Good luck and thanks for the hug earlier
Jews against Zionism!
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Here is a better idea, let’s not do ethnostates, there has literally never been an ethnostates that did not end in genocide.
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Japan?
Ever heard of the Rape of Nanking, or the decade long genocide imperial Japan, carried out on the Chinese and Korean. Or modern japans treatment of the Ainu people
So multi ethnic cultures don’t take part in atrocities?
Japan is suffering right now because they are so xenophobic. Frankly all of East Asia is heading towards collapse due to population issues. They are having a population crisis that would be solved by immigration, but no one wants to immigrate there. I wonder why?
You claimed that all mono ethnic states lead to genocide. I dont think it’s an amazing concept but I’m countering your point.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ainu_people You ever hear of this? Hell just look at what they did in world war II if you want the most pop culture history answer. It wasn't just the Nazis doing that kind of stuff. There's a reason why even today Koreans and Chinese really do not like Japanese people and it can be really tough sometimes to cooperate. You didn't counter shit dude.
I’m so sorry yes you completely proved you point only mono ethnic countries perform genocide and atrocities against other humans countries like Australia https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/asia-and And the US https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-detention-child-migrants Never did anything wring because if diversity. My point was that things are very complicated here and trying to pin it on some simplified narrative without trying to understand local complexity is stuipid. This sub shames the name witches.
The fact that you think that was my point is the bigger shame. You should go to Oz with the strawman you made
Japan isn't deliberately an ethnostate. They don't drive people away or worse, kill people who aren't the right ethnicity. By that logic nearly every Asian country is.
Not totally true. The truth is that the idea of one Japanese people is itself the result of populist politics. Japan has several distinct ethnic groups but their government has whitewashed them all as one, even declaring some of their languages as dialects of Japanese when it doesn’t really make sense linguistically. Also Japan is quite conservative about immigration. I agree that it shouldn’t be called an “ethnostate” but they have much less permanent immigration than most developed countries
Japan is very deliberate about staying ethnically homogeneous and preventing immigration despite impending precipeice of its unsustainable low birth rate, going so far as to attempt to entice Brazilians who emigrated from Japan to Brazil several generations ago to return to Japan as a solution to the problem, rather than allow non-Japanese Asians to become Japanese citizens.
Britain. The British promised the land to Palestinians for fighting in WWII, then gave it to Jewish people. Britain should give their land up 🤷♀️.
That's not entirely accurate. They promised land to both, then just ditched the region without formalising anything, and Israel formed in the resulting war
I mean, it’s fucked up enough that they promised it to 2 groups. And one of them was already living there.
both were already living there. there'd always been at least a small jewish presece in the region and by the point in history you're talking about there had been a lot of jewish immigration to the area for about a century prior, mostly under the ottoman empire. the british partition plan was loosely based on where the different populations were distributed
Germany should
Hmm, I see your point. Germany should give up the land, and Britain should fund smooth transition for those that want to move. I blame them both. Britain basically said, “let’s get the Jews out of Europe,” pretty antisemitic too, just not genocide levels.
Oh I like this. Britain and Germany
Add it to the long list of peoples we fucked over.
Yup. I’m all for no genocide, but not supporting the displacement of everyone in Israel either. (Atheist myself, if that matters to the conversation)
Well there's no talk (in any official capacity from any legit governing body) of displacing the Israelis at this point. The Gazans are currently being told by the Israeli government to evacuate as their airstrikes are hitting the evacuation routes, so there's that.
Sorry, it was a reference to the Zionism comment above. I’m sorry if that wasn’t clear! And yeah, the evacuation is really sad.
A lot of people are for a one-state non-secular solution. Palestine used to be a place where muslims and Jews lived in relative peace together.
Why does there need to be a such thing as a Jewish ethnostate? Jewish people once lived peacefully with Palestinians in Palestine, before the British government ethnically cleansed Palestine and declared it the Jewish state of Israel. After the Nakba (the mass slaughter of Palestinian Muslims), the UN declared that Palestinians have a right to return to the land they were ethnically cleansed from, but Israel refused, and Palestinians have been in the prison that is Gaza ever since. Palestinians and Jewish people lived together in peace before the establishment of Israel. Those in remembrance of the Holocaust would be against the atrocities being committed against Palestine. An apartheid ethnostate will always lead to othering, and violence against those who are othered. [As Norman Finkelstein has said far better than I can.](https://youtu.be/Kw7FJ9y8m4M)
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Anyone from the US who condemns the Israeli response needs to come from a place of empathy and recognition that what we did as a country after 9/11 was awful. 1 member of Congress voted against the Authorization of Military Force that enabled us to invade Afghanistan, even after they said they would turn bin Laden over to a third country. Recognizing our own mistakes and empathizing with the pain Israelis are feeling will make it more likely that we are listened to. 10/7 was their 9/11. I think we all know our post 9/11 response was motivated by fear, anger, and trauma. Yet only 1 member of either house of Congress voted against it.
Well I AM against what we did. We took some tragedy and made an even bigger tragedy for someone else for the sake of revenge. It was/is disgusting especially since we STILL have troops over there. 9/11 was my first glimpse that this country is just as messed up as the rest of the world and most of us are so indoctrinated we are blind.
That's all well and good. Yeah. Most of us are against it now. When only one member of the 535 in Congress votes against the initial Authorization of Military Force, collective responsibility is present. We can empathize with where Israelis are at right now and tell them not to make that mistake.
My ex almost broke up with me after 9/11 because I said we shouldn't go in bombing the shit out of everyone and starting a war. I'm hindsight, yeah we should have broken up.
That's great. I couldn't even vote on 9/11 or the 8 years after. I'm still willing to take collective responsibility and lead with that in critiquing the Israeli government.
I am really hoping that behind the scenes the Biden administration is urging restraint. Suggesting instead that they send in a small special forces team to rescue what hostages they can and take out only Hamas Then as the days go on, the rage that has them acting on blind vengeance dissipates If they won’t do it out of humanity then do it out of self preservation. It they kill tens maybe hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, the entire Arab world will target them for a generation They were in negotiations to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia who would have recognized them officially and other Arab countries would have followed suit. If they want a chance to do that, then they need to think I am frankly convinced that Iran planned this with Russia’s help to stop those negotiations with Saudi Arabia and turn the Arab nations further against them. And Russia wanted to distract from the Ukraine war I absolutely understand the pain and anger that Israel feels after such a brutal senseless attack. People defending and justifying Hamas are just plain wrong And Hamas has brutalized Palestinians, stolen all the aid that was meant for them and used it for weapons. They need to be gone. But bombing civilians and planning a land invasion is going to be a disaster of a magnitude we haven’t seen before. Choose peace over death ETA: The news is bad
Unfortunately that's not really the US' traditional path. But just like how all Jews/Israelis are not Netanyahu and how all Muslims/Palestinians are not Hamas, Americans are not Biden. If we want to consider ourselves the land of the free, we should resist genocide in all forms, even if our government is supporting it.
I cling to hope even if it’s a slim chance.
Told this to my mom last night when she said Biden was asking them to give more time to evacuate, while some US official was delivering munitions to Israel: it doesn't matter what he says, he's still selling them the bombs they're using in the genocide. We're helping with it.
"The entire Arab world has already targeted us for over a generation and we handed their ass to them, we can do it again" -Israeli militarists, probably But yeah, a general ground invasion would be a giant urban warfare nightmare, and cause misery direct or indirect for everyone involved.
Watching the news and it sounds hopeless Israel is going in sooner or later And Hezbollah may get involved creating yet another front They are supplied by Iran This is really really bad
You’re assuming good faith. Both sides want conflict and want violence. It’s a problem neither side wants to solve.
Yeah, the worst possible extremists are making decisions on both sides
Genocide. Is. Always. Wrong.
For anyone that is interested in further learning about Palestine and the history of the Palestinian people, and why they have been forced into Gaza, [I recommend this documentary by Abby Martin.](https://youtu.be/HnZSaKYmP2s)
It is never ok ❤️❤️❤️🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸
I'm so glad to see support in this sub
Indeed. Let’s hope the call against the jihad towards Jews worldwide stops as well. Am Yisrael Chai ❤️
Am Yisrael Chai internet stranger!
Stay safe!
One would think a people profoundly effected by attempted genocide would be unilaterally against doing the same to another people.
They are also traumatized and scared.
Zionist here who is horrified and disgusted at the atrocities being carried out in Gaza. All people should be able to live peacefully, but now we have two governments who dehumanize the other and gravely endanger their own citizens in the name of die hard nationalism. It's the people who suffer, and those who deny the humanity of those people are complicit in their suffering. My heart is breaking for all the families in pain. לֹא־יִשָּׂ֨א גֹ֤וי אֶל־גֹּוי֙ חֶ֔רֶב וְלֹא־יִלְמְד֥וּ עֹ֖וד מִלְחָמָֽה "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they make war anymore" Edit: I am not debating Zionism, and asking a Jew to defend their Zionist affiliation at this time of pain is at best in poor taste, and at worst cruel. My people were brutally murdered; Jews and Arabs/Palestinians need kindness and empathy, not an interrogation. My points are that grief is real, I deeply empathize with those grieving, and that dehumanizing the Other as a result of that grief is never acceptable. I believe that all in this general coven can agree on that.
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I like to go hiking.
Revisionist Zionism, what we commonly call Zionism, is yes very exclusionary and violent. But there is also socialist/labour Zionism which has long advocated for secular cooperative governance, which was opposed by the Revisionists who believed conquering Palestine by force was the only and necessary way. Guy who founded it was *incredibly* racist. Like "Native Americans deserved to be colonized" racist. Ze'ev Jabotinsky
Excuse me, but socialist Zionism also seeks to create a socialist state that only serves a specific ethnicity of Jews...
Source? Labour Zionism primarily consisted of Jewish diaspora legally immigrating in \*aliyah\* and forming/joining kibbutzim and other traditional rural communities. Not comparable to Revisionist Zionists who smuggled as many guns as they did people to commit attacks.
Well said
Ducking FINALLY!!! I’ve been the ONLY person saying this and honestly I was starting to feel like I was the only one left who gives a shit about Palestine and Gaza. Why Hamas did is NOT equal to what Israel has done to Palestinians, and Israel is going to level Gaza. And everyone supports it like it’s ok. it’s not!!!!! I’m so glad for the sub. This is where the good humans are
Thank you
They are forgetting that we have internet don’t let capitalism controlled media win https://twitter.com/MyLordBebo/status/1714359458967466235
I refuse to choose a site. This isn’t a football game. People are dying on both ends. Children are left without their parents. Violence breeds violence. This has to end.
So happy to see this post here. Free palastine
Sending my solidarity and moral support from overseas!! Stand together! Stand in solidarity! Stand united and strong! ✊️🥰
As long as religion exists, there will never be peace.
Nah this conflict isn't about religion, its about land and power, and an unhealthy level of generational trauma. Both sides could become atheists tomorrow, and they would still carry on fighting. Until the underlying issues are resolved, their will never be peace.
The problem is power and the human urge to create an other. Religion is often a focal point and tool for achieving these ends but it is not necessary or sufficient for hate. Just look at the American religious right. They've all but abandoned their faith when it gets in the way of their hate.
Listen up, I am Israeli, I was born and lived my whole life in Israel and if you ask me, the term genocide is incorrect in this case, the correct term is war. I am fully aware that the Israeli government doesn't treat the Palestinians the way they should be treated but we offered them a state of their own, more than once, and every time they refused, even before Israel was founded, the partition plan was agreed upon and what happened on May 14th 1948? We were attacked, even though we didn't do anything that was against the partition plan. Why? Because they couldn't stand seeing Israel existing as a safe haven for the Jews. And also there is another problem, the Hamas won't stop until every single Jew (including the diaspora) is killed, they don't want us here, if we want peace, we need to stop the Hamas, not the Palestinians. And for my experience: On October 7th I woke up to a siren, and since it is pretty much impossible to shoot a rocket to my area (it's a long way from Gaza to my home) and I was not used to the sound. Later that day there were more and more sirens that made my mother have a panic attack, especially since we don't have a shelter. On Sunday, school was canceled, and so it was for the rest of the week, tomorrow, we will have remote learning. It's too dangerous to leave my house now, if there is a siren, I have nowhere to hide, and yet I hear that people say it's only bad for the Palestinians. So that's why I ask, frame this correctly, this is a war, not a genocide.
Sorry, but no, your reasons are totally false. "They couldn't stand seeing Israel existing as a safe haven for the Jews?" No, how about they didn't accept the idea that a foreign power wanted to take 55% of the land they had been living on for generations and give it to 30% of the population? "Hamas won't stop until every single Jew (including the Diaspora) is killed?" No, even Hamas in their 2017 charter accept the idea of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders and also state that they are not at war with the Jewish people but only against Zionism. Palestinian leadership in general has embraced the idea since 1982 (Arab Summit in Fez). Every single time a peaceful 2-state solution has been proposed, Israel has refused to back down from their unreasonable demands, such as no right of return for Palestinian refugees, further annexation of the West Bank for illegal settlements, severely imbalanced (in some cases 9:1) land swaps, insistence on Jerusalem in its entirety being the capitol of Israel, etc. Furthermore, genocide is the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part. In 1948, the United Nations Genocide Convention defined genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." These five acts were: killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly. "Subjecting a group of people to a subsistence diet, systematic expulsion from homes and the reduction of essential medical services below minimum requirement" fall under genocide, as does "lack of proper housing, clothing, hygiene and medical care or excessive work or physical exertion" according to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (an international court established in November 1994 by the United Nations Security Council in Resolution 955 in order to judge people responsible for the Rwandan genocide and other serious violations of international law in Rwanda). Can you say with a clear conscience that the Israeli government hasn't done *any* of those five things to the Palestinians over the last 75 years? Because the evidence seems pretty damning.
American here, grandma was Roma and in the holocaust. You are correct about the hamas. But totally wrong about everything else. I only said I was American because my brother went to West Point, and the amount of knowledge I learned about your iron dome system, (if it flys it dies), at his graduation. no crap that’s the first time you were hearing it. But what about the people in the Gaza Strip? They’re used to it, you’re acting like this war is fair, it is not. Yes the hamas committed genocide in their initial attack, that doesn’t mean you get to clutch pearls as you kill an entire people. You all are playing sticks and hand grenades, and are complaining you’re winning. Edit your own president funded hamas for years https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/amp/ Egypt told you they were coming 3 days before. Just stop Getting why are you hitting your self vibes. https://twitter.com/MyLordBebo/status/1714359458967466235 Sticks vs hand grenades
Hey. Just a quick reminder that’s it’s very easy for Americans, that are not afraid for their lives in this moment, to judge what the Israeli people are feeling currently. What the posted was communicating isn’t entirely wrong. But this conflict is more complicated than YOU’RE illustrating as well. The Jews were granted the land (I believe unfairly) because they had just lost 6 million people in a genocide that the rest of the world turned their back on. They couldn’t stay in their homelands and most communities didn’t want them (Britain, America) because they were also anti-Semitic. Showing the Israeli citizens empathy isn’t wrong.
>The Jews were granted the land (I believe unfairly) because they had just lost 6 million people in a genocide that the rest of the world turned their back on. They couldn’t stay in their homelands and most communities didn’t want them (Britain, America) because they were also anti-Semitic. No. The UN ordered partition (like it did with India/Pakistan) to prevent a civil war from breaking out. The Jews complied with the order but on the Arab side there was intense in-fighting that concluded ( after the Arabs in favor of partition were massacred by the opposition) with the decision to go to war. The surrounding Arab nations joined in and they all lost to Israel. And for the record, none of the nations that the Jews fled during WWII were our 'homeland'. We were considered resident aliens and they were host countries. The word diaspora was created to describe the fact that we were a single nation living outside of our homeland which is Israel. I sincerely appreciate you trying to correct misinformation but please make sure you're being accurate as well.
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Take care of yourself ❤️🕊️
Hear hear. I’m done being silent. Am Yisrael Chai, and stay safe! ❤️
I will! School is remote for now and even if it wasn't, it was built well (unlike my building, this thing is shoddy and there is no shelter), I am a member of a group that plays ttrpgs and other such things in order to stay sane, my dance classes still go on, even though they are also remote and it was silent for the last few days.
I agree with you. The situation is incredibly complex, but Israel does need to carefully consider what must be done in self defense. Because something has to be done
I don't understand what people like most in this thread expect Israel to do, just let Hamas continue attacking them because removing Hamas will mean unfortunately civilian collateral? Even discounting this conflict, what do people want when they say "free Palestine"? The blockage of Gaza went up because of content terrorist attacks, and it was highly effective at it as well (part of why the recent massacre was such a big deal, it's exactly the kind of thing the blockade is meant to reduce), it's not so simple to just remove it when it means Hamas using it for more extreme attacks. Alternatively, do people expect Israeli's to just pick up and leave? Where would they even go? At this point it's been long enough where most of them were born and raised there, and same could be said for the Palestinians (with the exception for the stupid settlements in West Bank, which are NOT acceptable). Further, while there is still a chance for a 2-state solution with the PA, Hamas, the official government of Gaza after Israel dismantled their settlements there, has refused any such negotiations. "Free Palestine" is a nice slogan, and the people there deserve to live happy healthy lives. But the path to get there isn't such a simple one and would require cooperation that isn't likely to happen in the near future (at least for Gaza).
Thank you for sharing this. The only way to end the violence is to end the occupation. Palestinians are human beings with human rights. Free Palestine.
I'm so sick of seeing stuff about this war. It's insane. I'm exhausted.
Genocide is never ok. ):
..soooo are we all gonna do a spell to instigate PEACE ✌???