As I write these words, I am sitting at home in Tel Aviv, trying to figure out how to protect my family in a house with no shelter or safe room, following with growing panic the reports and rumors of horrible events taking place in the Israeli towns near Gaza which are under attack. I see people, some of them my friends, calling on social media to attack Gaza more fiercely than ever before. Some Israelis are saying that now is the time to eradicate Gaza entirely — essentially calling for genocide. Through all the explosions, the dread and the bloodshed, speaking about peaceful solutions seems like madness to them.
Yet I remember that everything that I am feeling now, which every Israeli must be sharing, has been the life experience of millions of Palestinians for far too long. The only solution, as it has always been, is to bring an end of apartheid, occupation, and siege, and promote a future based on justice and equality for all of us. It is not in spite of the horror that we have to change course — it is exactly because of it.
There are so many things I could say to this, but I’ll just leave these here instead:
As some gamers would say: Git gud
That just shows that Israel has the better military. Everyone already knows that.
It has nothing to do with who is justified in the conflict.
If 10,000 people wielding rocks tried to take over the Whitehouse, I’m pretty sure we’d see 10,000 dead people with rocks in their hands. Does that make them the good guys?
Palestinians have been TARGETING Israeli children for death. Israel had been targeting military targets, and with a better record of minimizing civilian casualties than even the United States.
… Let’s it put it this way: if Palestinians put down their weapons, this conflict would be over in a matter of months.
If Israel out down their weapons, Palestinians would murder them all. It’s in their elected leaders’ charter, for fucks sake.
🙉🙈🙊
You just look up Israeli snipers and killing children if you want to talk about targeting children.
I mean you had plenty of people try to take over the white house on Jan 6 and not a lot of them were shot.
Also by your rock example, are you telling me you think all of the 31,000 Palestinians killed by IDF or settlers in 2018 were active combatants?
If you have a source for that, share it.
The big difference between the sides is that Israel’s rules of engagement are all about minimizing civilian casualties, and when one of their soldiers violates that policy, Israel investigates and punishes them. Contrast that to Hamas, who have no rules of engagement, and deliberately and openly celebrate their targeting of Israeli civilians. And when they succeed in killing innocent children, they are celebrated.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/02/28/israeli-snipers-targeted-children-health-workers-journalists/
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/israeli-soldier-posts-photo-of-palestinian-child-in-crosshairs-of-a-sniper-s-rifle-1.1280973
https://actionaid.org/news/2023/deadliest-year-nearly-40-children-among-over-230-palestinians-killed-israeli-forces-and
Seems like a lot of people making unvarified claims. Nothing new.
So thought crimes are worse than killing people. That is some just top tier justification there. It’s almost like mass murder gets people to hate you.