this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023
380 points (95.5% liked)

World News

39004 readers
2778 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

By Alice Cuddy BBC News, Jerusalem


The call to Mahmoud Shaheen came at dawn.

It was Thursday 19 October at about 06:30, and Israel had been bombing Gaza for 12 days straight.

He'd been in his third-floor, three-bedroom flat in al-Zahra, a middle-class area in the north of the Gaza Strip. Until now, it had been largely untouched by air strikes.

He'd heard a rising clamour outside. People were screaming. "You need to escape," somebody in the street shouted, "because they will bomb the towers".

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 200 points 1 year ago (140 children)

Everytime I read an article like this, my immediate reaction is posting a comment expressing my disgust with the Israeli State's actions and everytime I hesitate because I don't want to suffer the inevitable wave of people defending the Israeli State's actions as somehow justifiable because Hamas did something vile first.

It's a continuing cycle of violence and the Israeli State holds a humongous power advantage. They don't use that power disparity to deescalate and integrate the Palestinian people to prevent Hamas from having support. Instead they do shit like this where they drive Palestinians straight into Hamas' hands, because the Palestinian people are given no other option to turn to.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 year ago (36 children)

Your last point is why I feel like what Israel is doing is just straight up illogical, even from a purely selfish point of view. The only thing they are doing here is basically proving Hamas "right" in the eyes of many Gazans, and fueling a fervent desire for revenge. If someone living in Gaza wasn't already a terrorist, they sure as hell are much much more likely to be one now.

Imagine how you would feel if your home and possibly moved ones were bombed like this, losing you everything or nearly everything you hold dear. You lose autonomy over your own life, you lose your independence and rights. I imagine it feels a lot like losing rights as a minority, or something like getting an abortion becoming illegal, turned to the extreme. And these things being threatened to be done to me already cause me to feel strong contempt against the perpetrators. If pushed far enough, things like this would cause me to become a "terrorist", in the sense of being willing to strongly resist it in an attempt to maintain my rights and autonomy.

But of course, whether I would be called a terrorist or not depends on how it's framed, and how much compassion or understanding people would give me. Hell, in the US LGBTQ+ activists, or anti-racist/anti-fascist activists are already called terrorists sometimes.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (12 children)

There are three lenses through which the Israeli government's actions make sense:

  1. They are supremacists who were looking for an excuse to escalate an ethnic cleansing they have no way to complete without a goddamn good framing for the Western press.

  2. They're a far right government looking to appease far right voters who only want to solve a blood conflict with more blood, and never by taking advantage of their superior position to force de-escalation. These are politicians merely trying to conserve their own seats, no matter ethical considerations or what's good for their country.

  3. Racism, ethnic supremacism, religious bigotry, emotional meltdowns and the unability to see a conflict in any other way than seeing you as the first and last victim are all great ingredients to enter into a spiral of terribly irrational decisions. All of these ingredients are present in the Israeli government and in a good portion of Israeli society.

load more comments (8 replies)
load more comments (31 replies)
load more comments (134 replies)