I genuinely do not know who the bad guys are. S lot of my leftist friends are against Israel, but from what I know Israel was attacked and is responding and trying to get their hostages back.
Enlighten me. Am I wrong? Why am I wrong?
And dumb it down for me, because apparently I’m an idiot.
In Western fiction, you are taught to support the scrappy underdogs facing oppression from a racist occupying force. You root for them and cheer when they blow up military facilities and you feel for them when they lose their compatriots to oppressor violence. You know very well who the good guys and bad guys are.
But then, in Western media, with a mere change of labeling and some paper-thin propaganda, they will have you believing the opposite. All they need to do is call the freedom fighter resistance “terrorists”, say that the occupiers “have a right to defend themselves”, and pretend the “conflict” is “complicated” and really about religion. And they will so this even when the occupier ramps up genocide to unignorable levels.
The good guys remain those fighting occupation. This is consistent with a basic understanding of liberation, with nearly everyone’s stated beliefs about self-determination, and international law. The bad guys are the ethnic supremacist apartheid settler colonist occupiers doing a genocide as well as their supporters.
Question- isn’t Hamas constantly attacking Israel with the stated goal to eradicate them?
Israel is a racist genocidal settler-colonial ethnostate. All good people wish for the destruction of such a thing just like all good people wished for the destruction of the apartheid South African ethnostate. If Hamas wishes this, they should be commended for it, don’t you think? And anyone who disagrees called out for the racial supremacist that they are?
I’ve seen many people in this post say the best solution is a two state system. You’re saying that’s not what you would prefer, and that Israel should be wiped out?
I don’t have a particular opinion on your view because my knowledge of what Israel and Hamas has done is admittedly limited, but I would lean towards the idea that you’re justifying Israel’s reaction and statements that the reason they are taking the action they are is because of, well, ideas like yours.
I think, from what I’ve learned over the past week of exploring this situation, that a two state solution is fair and striving for peace and understanding between the two parties is desirable. I seem to have an innately negative reaction to what you suggest here.
What does destruction of Israel as a genocidal settler-colonial ethnostate look like to you? Does it look like Oct 7 writ large across all of Israel? Does it look like the massive bombing campaign, displacement, and destruction of capacity for civilians to live that Israel has perpetrated in Gaza?
Israel has been keeping Palestinians in a brutal and murderous apartheid state and brutalizing them for 80 years-- imprisoning them indefinitely without charges too. But you want to question what the oppressed do and why, as if it was mysterious. I’m having a hard time beleiving you when you say you want this explained to you, but I suppose I’ll take it at face value and hope for the best.
If you truly want to understand this stuff, start with a deep dive-- several actually, into history. Start with the jewish-roman wars to understand the zionist/zealot motivations. At this point the original states of Israel were 1000 years gone, having weakened themselves with civil war over taxation, then plundered and abosrbed by the neo-babylonians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish–Roman_wars
From there you’ll want to look at the expansion of the ottoman empire and jewish place in it, and how they were governed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Ottoman_Empire This overlapped with the crusades. I recommend “empires of the sea” by crowley. Crucial in there is how the Ottoman empire depended on slaves to function, but their religion only allowed them to get slaves by capturing them in battle, and it forbade muslims from trading in slaves thesmelves, but allowed buying them. Hence the birth of slave traders as a caste, who were foriegn, and became largely a jewish group. This understandably was not well received back in Europe, where the slaves came from. The ottomans almost totally depopulated the mediteranean coasts gathering slaves. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-13260-5_14 Toward the end of the ottoman empire (it was an 800 year empire), they officially tolerated muslims as slave traders. (Progress?)
You can also read up on how jews participated in and were persecuted in the crusades, and draw some conclusions as to why and how that played out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_and_the_Crusades#:~:text=In the First Crusade%2C Jewish,Jews in France suffered especially.
Then move on to jewish presence in the region during the ottoman empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Turkey
Read up on how jewish expulsions from european countries came about because of christianities Vix pervenit. Theres a lot there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vix_pervenit
See how because of medeival views of usury, Jews were ejcted by monarchs in europe as a way to justify seizing their assets, only to allow them back a bit later and starting the process over https://humsci.stanford.edu/feature/stanford-historian-explores-how-expulsions-became-widespread-medieval-europe
From there you can end up in the start of WW2, the jewish holocaust, and then Haganah and Irgun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haganah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun
Partition, the UN creating a state of Israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine
Israel’s leadership thoughts at the time: https://www.progressiveisrael.org/ben-gurions-notorious-quotes-their-polemical-uses-abuses/
From there, the Nakba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba
The six day war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War The USS liberty incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident
The first and second intifada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Intifada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Intifada
Oslo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo_I_Accord
The creation of hamas by Israel to thwart the PLO peace plans and two state solution https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/
9/11 and Osama bin laden, and the use and weaponization of his logic by western powers https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/miller.html
The rise of indefinite administrative detention https://apnews.com/article/israel-detention-jails-palestinians-west-bank-793a3b2a1ce8439d08756da8c63e5435
Storming of al aqsa mosque on oct 4 2023 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/4/israeli-settlers-storm-al-aqsa-mosque-complex-on-fifth-day-of-sukkot
October 7 2023 attacks https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67039975
The use of the hannibal directive https://www.progressiveisrael.org/ben-gurions-notorious-quotes-their-polemical-uses-abuses/
You can google and read a lot about the negoatiations and doubts for whether Netenyahu wanted to negotiate for the release of hostages at all, and the Israelis protesting his lack of interest in getting the hostages back. You can also look at settler groups auctioning off peices of gaza, and now lebanon.
That’s fine. Some of my leftist friends feel the same way, like I’m not asking in good faith. I don’t have any way to convince you that I am. I just feel like I’m not educated on the subject and that’s why I’m looking for a wide array of facts and opinions.
Personally I think your perception is part of a larger problem of a breakdown in communication and education, where people automatically assume the worst of everyone’s intentions because of either experience with other bad actors, or because you feel like since you have the knowledge you have and it feels intuitive to you, you feel like everyone else must also have that knowledge and anyone outside of that sphere is simply trying to be a disruptor.
Just to be clear, Hamas does not want to eradicate the Jews. That is a myth propagated by Israel.
Hamas wants to eliminate Israel, by which they mean they want Israel replaced by an Arab-majority state in which both Jews and Arabs live. (Hamas want the return of 4 million Palestinian refugees to Israel/Palestine, which would make it an Arab-majority state.)
Furthermore, they have indicated they are open to negotiating a Two-State solution.
I don’t think it makes any sense to portray Hamas as unreasonable for wanting Arabs to control the whole land (from the river to the sea) when Israel want the same thing for Jews.
Why does Hamas get to say they want to eradicate Israel as a state and have Arab-majority control over the region, but Israel doesn’t get to say they want to control the entire region? What makes who correct to say that in either case?
