Congressional staff say the mood inside the Capitol is tense, stifling and bewildering as members brush off their constituents’ outrage.
Congressional staff say the mood inside the Capitol is tense, stifling and bewildering as members brush off their constituents’ outrage.
I’m not sure how my idea will come across but here goes.
This Gaza conflict is complicated as F. I think most people agree with that.
Pretty much everyone that’s touched it has blood on their hands by this point. And everyone in the fallout has been hurt in some immeasurably painful way.
The US involvement multiples the complexity because there is evidently a proxy between Hamas and Iran, and the US is already in opposition to Iran in other ways.
The US is also in the position of throwing its weight around in many other conflicts at the moment.
Diplomatically, this US is walking a thin line all over the place between needing to show strength vs compassion. Using negotiating finesse vs being strong fisted.
Inside the US, our representatives ideally can think for themselves, but as a party they hopefully work as a team to represent the American best interests, vis a vis “the people.” Specifically, I mean the people don’t always know what they want or how to get there, nor do they educate themselves as a whole about every issue at play. Not to mention that international diplomacy issues are very often not shared with the public.
So, yes, the average human with a functioning soul wants to see a ceasefire yesterday. But what if there is something else at play that we don’t know about, which justifies not pressuring Israel to stop?
What, in your mind, justifies helping genocide?
No joke, you clearly think its a possible concept. What thing could you theorize justifies this?
Genocide is unacceptable. It’s unjustified in every case. Does this conflict meet the definition of genocide? And if so, who is the perpetrator here?
Youre dodging the question with a joke? Really?
Not sure if you’re being sarcastic or serious. I’m being serious. I’d be happy to learn and discuss if you’re willing to reply with more than accusations.
As I understand it, the Hamas Charter says that Israel should not exist. At all. Attacking civilians as opposed to Israeli militants appears to reinforce that assesment. I’m not sure this meets the definition of genocide but telling your opponent they don’t get to exist seems to bark up that tree.
At the same time, Israel is sending missles into populous zones, which absolutely sucks, but isn’t that where Hamas attacks from and stores weaponry? I consent that I only think this because of what I’ve read. I have no idea if it’s really factual. Is Hamas using the Palestinians as a shield to further their goals? That doesn’t sound like symbiosis, it sounds like a parasite.
If it’s true, why is Hamas putting civilians in the line of fire by waging war and then locating their gear in such a location? That sounds a bit genocidal in the same way that cancer kills its host.
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How do you reconcile the fact that Hamas explicitly does not want Israelis to exist anymore though? Does that not mean they intend to carry out a genocide?
They would be fine with Israelis becoming Palestinian. That’s hardly genocide.
They just don’t want Israel to exist.
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A real hadith quote from Hamas’ founding charter, Article VII (1988)
Let’s be totally real here, for most of their short history Hamas has been deeply committed to carrying out a genocide against the Jewish people for a mix of reasons including politics, religion and race. Over the last 4-5 years Hamas have made an effort to moderate their language around this topic, but judging by recent events they have done very little to moderate their actions and ideology.
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I’ve never found this sort of argument compelling. Yes, it’s possible there’s things going on we don’t know about; and sometimes tactical and strategic necessities may require hidden actions.
Those actions still need brought to light as soon as it’s feasible to do so; and I struggle to imagine what sort of strategic necessity would require this sort of stance for more than a few months, let alone the years these stances have been in effect. Not to mention the difficulty of keeping something on this scale quiet for this long. At best, things are more or less as they appear - the alternative is there’s things they don’t want their electors to find out.
Just as in any schoolyard fight when you remove the power imbalance and or the bully the problem goes away.
The solution here is to move one of the “kids in the fight” somewhere else. One of them is saying I was here first. The other kid has a rich dad.
We all know what the correct moral decision is here when you take away the political labels.
The big fuckup here was by daddy England back in 1947 and he’s got massive egg and on his face right now.
In a fair world, I would agree with you. But in every conflict since the beginning of time, at least on this faulty rock careening through space, the wealthy are the winners. Every king became king because he controlled the most resources and squashed his opposers.
If the rest of the world hadn’t gotten involved I don’t think Gaza would have even made it this far.
“Man, it’s too complicated… I don’t know… man… None of my business…”
That’s all that I’m getting from this. This is not the first time in history when people have turned a blind eye to a massacre because “it’s too complicated”.
https://youtu.be/62I61kBahNY?si=EPFMpGYNM1gCK2iT
Michael Brooks on the complexity of Gaza.
Leadership of Hamas is in Qatar, money from Qatar was released through Israel by Bibi. So additional to this video showing how not complex it is, the Israeli leader wants Hamas in charge to make sure nothing peaceful happens in a joined Westbank and Gaza.
It’s not complicated to say that I don’t want my tax dollars to provide weapons to blow up people in their homes.
Only the ones filled to the brim with pro-Israeli and pro-colonialist propaganda agrees with you. You are either against white supremacist settler-colonialism or you’re not.
I think this response is why there’s so little productive dialogue out there. Everybody is too deeply entrenched.
No, this is very productive… more and more people in the world are seeing the monstrosity the west has created in Israel - even USians are waking up to it.
You’re not bemoaning a lack of “productivity” - you are bemoaning the fact that the propaganda shielding Israel which has been preventing “productivity” for the last seventy years is starting to implode.
Just as I was starting to take you seriously,
You do know that “America” doesn’t stop at the Mexican border, right?
I know that the “United States of America” is the only country with the word “America” in its name. I know that the “United Mexican States” also has the words “united” and states" in its name – are Mexicans “USians” too?
I know that most Mexicans, by default, refer to people from the United States as “Americanos.” I know that most Canadians are quite happy not to be confused with the “Americans” from south of their border.
I know that people from the United States of America have been referred to as “Americans” for over 200 years. I know that when someone makes it a point to start calling someone else by a different name than the one that’s preferred, that person is usually pushing some outside agenda and should not be taken seriously in the conversation at-hand.
TL;DR: What does any of this have to do with your point about Israel and Gaza?
Oh, I’ve heard them refer to you by plenty of terms.
By whom? Your fellow colonialists? Lol!
You’re the one that went on this little tangent because somebody referred to you by a term you don’t approve of, USian - you tell me?
Yet you still don’t seem to understand why a serious person might hesitate to take you seriously?
I don’t directly have a dog in this fight, and I could never hope to properly untangle the moral standing of each side. At best I can comment on what I see as the obvious righteous mess that it has become.
Those who are entrenched in their positions and have resorted to slinging labels or using pejoritaves don’t move others closer to their positions, they move them further. That is what I mean by unproductive.
But I can comment on why the elected American representatives may be letting calls go to voicemail in regards to a ceasefire. Since the beginning of time as we know it, the winner of a conflict writes the history book, and Hamas doesn’t have enough apparent support to emerge from this still controlling Gaza.
I can imagine an American calculus that history will blame Hamas for the unnecessary deaths, and another few months of not changing the stance on Israel’s strategy will not impact the rest of the course of world affairs in any other significant way.
The “marketplace of ideas” is a thoroughly debunked idea, Clyde - only the most desperate liberals cling to it these days.
The entire propaganda model that the US and Europe has spent untold treasure propping up for the last fifty years or so to protect their little white supremacist “fortress state” in the middle-east is falling apart right in front of our eyes… and there’s absolutely nothing that the (so-called) “west” can do to reverse that now.
This would not have happened were it not for Hamas’ attack.
They don’t get to write the history books in whatever way they see fit any more - those days are long gone. Any historian that pretends US hegemony in the middle-east hasn’t been significantly weakened due to the (so-called) “War On Terror” isn’t one that’s going to be taken very seriously.