this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
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NonCredibleDefense

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[–] [email protected] 138 points 11 months ago (5 children)

That's what I find insane. It's like people have lost the ability to say, "what Israel is/was doing was fucked, but also fuck Hamas for mass murder and rape". People get upset when you say, "I feel bad for the Israelis and Palestinians". You're either pro-hamas, anti-israel or pro-israel, anti-hamas. You're either pro-palestine and anti-israel, or anti-palestine and pro-israel.

You know you can be sympathetic to the civilians on both sides and hate the extremists right?

[–] [email protected] 46 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, it's one of those polarizing issues, where people on both sides decide that any opinion is binary and you either are all in for Israel or all in for Palestina and you can't have any empathy or understanding for both sides.

These past days people yelled at me in the fediverse that I chill for Israel's illegal occuption and also that I chill for Hamas and blame their atrocities on Israel. It's insane. You can hardly have any other opinion than either Israel all bad or Palestine all bad.

It's disgusting how many people on both sides support slaughtering civilians of the other side while at the same time saying that the other side are monsters for slaughtering civilians.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Welcome to modern politics, where the range of opinions that a person accepts is so small that it doesn't overlap with the range that a person on the other side accepts.

If you have an opinion in the middle, everyone will just hate you and having a discussion is impossible.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

I blame Western media's fairness bias. Decades of pushing the idea that every issue has exactly two sides, no more and no less, and those sides are exactly opposite each other and fully equal.

Israel, represented by their hardline zionist governments, on one side. Palestine, represented by the hardline islamists of Hamas, on the other. Nothing exists off that axis, nothing exists between those poles but Enlightened Centrist fence sitters. Fairness.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has taken on symbolic importance to many people. In one sense whatever is going on there is not really important for most of the world. It's some kind of internal conflict/civil war with essentially neighbors beating each other up. But it doesn't really affect anyone else significantly. And yet everyone has a take on who is right and who is wrong and the thinking is very black and white and absolutist, even if you really don't know what's going on or the history behind it or the stakes.

Contrast this with other similar conflicts that most people have no opinion on. Like Ethiopia-Tigray or the ongoing civil war in Myanmar. Most people probably haven't even heard of this stuff and have no clue as to who is fighting who. Hell, how many people had the barest inkling of who Hamas was a week ago. And now they feel they can take some absolute morally superior position on the issue.

It's because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become symbolic of who you are. The other conflicts I mentioned have no symbolic meaning or importance to people outside those regions. The Ukraine war is another highly symbolic conflict and that's why it's often mentioned in the same breath, but the myriad of other ethnic conflicts going on throughout the world are ignored.

The power of symbolic positions is that they strongly ensure group cohesion. You wear these symbols on your chest like a medal or a placard. They superficially resemble personal opinions, but actually they're badges of membership. Most people don't actually think hard about these issues or try to understand deeply what's going on. Instead they are told what to believe and what to say by people that they trust and identify with. Once it's clear what the "correct" position is, people will wear it with pride.

Deeply thinking about a complex issue is extremely resource intensive and most people just don't care that much. We also want to clearly delineate things into categories of good/bad. It's a natural heuristic that feels good. Once you know a thing is "good" you cheer it on. If a thing is "bad" you loudly denounce it with your peers. If a big thing happens, but you don't know if it's good or bad then you feel uncomfortable mental dissonance. Big things can't just be left in a state of psychological limbo. You need to decide if it's good or bad. And so we do, collectively.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 11 months ago (1 children)

And when you take that stance, you get called an enlightened centrist. I lack the words to express my frustration. Why is life so cheap to these people? Do they even fathom what's being lost?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (1 children)

No, they don't have any clue what's being lost because they haven't seen anything other than the flickering blue light of their computer monitor for the past 4 years.

The people least well adjusted (terminally online) are the ones online all the time upvoting and posting things and only generally interacting with others that are terminally online. This lack of interaction with other ideas leads to this radicalization and lack of care for others.

There's no use in trying to convince the guy that hasn't left mom's basement in 6 years. What's he gonna do? Get cheeto dust on me?

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Doesn't help that people conflate Hamas with Palestinian civilians.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago

This is why I mostly stay out of that conversation. I don't know enough about the history or politics or general demographics of the region to have an informed and nuanced perspective. I just know it's not good

[–] [email protected] 26 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What!? But! My brain! 2 things!? No . . . One thing! Only pro or anti! Cannot compute!! slams fists on keyboard

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

Reality is a team sport, to some people.

[–] [email protected] 81 points 11 months ago (10 children)

free palestine from hamas

awfully lot of people make the mistake of conflating palestinians with hamas, especially considering that the last elections were out there almost 20 years ago and weren't allowed since. west bank effectively treats gaza as under rebel government

(same goes for conflating israelis with israeli govt of course. they have mostly-functional elections, but bibi tries hard to undo it with his judiciary fuckery. this might be one reason for intelligence lapse - some army people resigned as a result of these moves and in parallel some seats were stuffed with bibi's people)

then you have this bit where likud needs hamas because this riles up israeli nationalists, which harass and contain gaza and send out settlers which radicalizes palestinian right wingers, which

this has been going on for considerable time and is deliberate strategy of likud https://www.vox.com/23910085/netanyahu-israel-right-hamas-gaza-war-history https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/

goes without saying that you can't really have peaceful palestine with hamas existing but i'd also say that you can't really have peaceful palestine with likud in power

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago

This is the right take. Likud and Hamas (and the other minor parties/terror groups aligned with those two) deserve each other. The civilians don't deserve to be caught between them. They're both fairly popular afaik, but I can't necessarily blame the people when either side unilaterally disarming would face atrocities.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago

It's all so fucked. I can't even imagine what it's like to be one of the millions of civilians caught between two groups of shitty opportunists.

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

After the Hamas attack the news showed video of Palestinians singing and dancing in the street. My buddy just took a sip of his coffee "What are they celebrating, their last day of having houses? For every action there is a reaction, and an Israeli reaction is quite a fucking thing"

I shouldnt have laughed but not only did I know he was right but he managed to make it a Snatch reference.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 11 months ago (6 children)

Trust noncredibledefense to have the proper takes.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Which is true and also sad. When the Ukraine Boogaloo started r/noncredibledefense was one of the best sources there. Which isn’t shining a good light on the rest of that site.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago

nah this is expected. non-specialist won’t find IR/geopolitics/defense shitsposts funny, or even understand them in more obscure cases

[–] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago

Gotta know what's right in order to REALLY get it wrong.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 11 months ago (9 children)

It's quite spectactular. I think the politcs on both sides are awful, and I really feel for the civillians who are just trying to live their lives under this bullshit. Both sides need to step up and take responsibility for their major, horrific fuckups and problems; and the west in general needs to take responsibility for kicking people out of their homes to make homes for others... but also both sides just need to stop fucking hurting each other for a minute in order to progress.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (3 children)

So Israel needs to stop colonizing Palestine, as that is the primary cause of death and conflict.

Saying both sides just need to stop when one is constantly the aggressor and the other is responding to that aggression is zero tolerance logic. Blaming the victim is why things have escalated to the point we are at now.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago (10 children)

They're not colonizing Palestine. They're eradicating it.

And this has been going on for almost 80 years. Anything anyone does, is always, in response to some shitty thing someone did before. But fact of the matter is, Israel benefits more than Palistine to have a conflict. So much that the time when it actually looked like someone could talk both sides to a peaceful conclusion. Israel had him assassinated.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The Day Israel became a country they were attacked. They've been on defense since day 1.

They're too heavy handed that's clear but they are not the aggressor or instigator in this fight. They've offered dozens of peace deals, brokered by a variety of 3rd parties, only to be rejected because Hamas wants Jews dead. It's in their founding Charter, just to be clear about who's intent is what over there in terms of aggression.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (5 children)

Evicting Palestinians from Palestinian territory by force so that Isreali settlers can occupy their land is being defensive?

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (5 children)

When the response to that aggression is also genocide fantasies, sometimes a conflict has no good guys.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I condemn and disagree with Hamas as well. The way they've attacked Israel does nothing but invite suffering for both nations involved, especially Palestinians.

But let's be honest. What's Palestine really getting in aid? Hamas, although extreme and definitely a terrorist group, are the only ones fighting back against Israel? I can't remember anyone putting sanctions on Israel and threatening military action if they continue to destroy settlements in Gaza. It's always just a slap on the wrist.

Sure, free Palestine from Hamas, but then what? Israel gets to continue doing what it has been doing for decades? How does that not just create Hamas 2.0?

The people losing their families don't need thoughts and prayers, and aid money to keep them on a life support machine. I'm genuinely looking for an answer here, because for Palestinians, it does seem like Hamas is their only option?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Violent revolution is never chosen by the oppressed, it is imposed by the oppressor

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 11 months ago

Wtf this is way too credible

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's been genuinely distressing to see people condoning such horrific behaviour. Thank you for the small dose of sanity.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I've never seen a single person advocating Palenstein ever offer their support for Hamas. Yet social media out pouring suggests otherwise.

It's been weird seeing moral grandstanding from right wingers supporting Israel, because of the war crimes committed by hamas yet when the same thing is reported happening to Ukranians by Russia, its suddenly all fake and we shouldn't get involved and other shinty excuses.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

*Palestine

Palenstein sounds like a castle in Germany.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Over the last few days I've noticed that the Venn diagram "Russia's recent attacks on Ukraine are good, actually" and "Hamas' recent attacks on Israel are good, actually" posters is a circle.

Seriously, whenever you find the most extremist pro-atrocity stuff you can search their names and "ukraine" and find the worst Vatnik crap.

If you're rooting for either team in Israel vs Hamas, I'm giving you the stink-eye.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

We must achieve peace, by force!

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

This is to credible!

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