As the title states I am confused on this matter. The way I see it, the USA has a two party system and in the next few weeks they’re either going to have Trump or Harris as president, come inauguration day. With this in mind doesn’t it make sense to vote for the person least likely to escalate the situation even more.

Giving your vote to an independent or worse not voting at all, just gives more of a chance for Trump to win the election and then who knows what crazy stuff he will allow, or encourage, Israel to get away with.

I really don’t get the logic. As sure nobody wants to vote for a party allowing these heinous crimes to be committed, but given you’re getting one of them shouldn’t you be voting for the one that will be the least horrible of the two.

Please don’t come at me with pro-Israeli rhetoric as this isn’t the post for that, I’m asking about why people would make such choices and I’m not up for debate on the Middle East, on this post, you can DM me for that.

Edit: Bedtime here now so will respond to incoming comments in the morning, love starting the day with an inbox full 😊.

Edit 2: This blew up, it’s a little overwhelming right now but I do intent on replying to everybody that took the time to comment. Just need to get in the right headspace.

  • Count042@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    Who has killed more civilians?

    By multiple orders of magnitude?

    This is like “Man, I don’t like the sun and light bulbs, they’re both so bright.”

    • GeneralInterest@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Ideally I don’t think any civilian deaths should happen, so they’re both wrong. I’m not going to say Hamas is somehow better because they killed fewer people. To me that seems like saying “oh you didn’t kill too many people, that’s fine then”. Which would be completely wrong in my view.

      • Count042@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        They also don’t have systemized rape and torture camps paid for with your taxes.

        By any quantitative value system, Hamas commits less evil than the state of Israel

        Comparing them is as useful as comparing the relative brightness between the sun and a lightbulb. The two sides are not comparable. One is committing genocide. Trying to gloss over that fact is propaganda trying to cover up the fact that we’re paying for the weapons doing the killing.

        • GeneralInterest@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Yeah I’m not into the whole “let’s excuse Hamas” thing. In my view killing civilians is bad, which is why I think both Hamas and the Israeli government are bad. Neither should kill civilians at all - not 1, not 100, not 1,000, etc.

          • Count042@lemmy.ml
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            2 months ago

            Good job responding to something I didn’t say to try and discredit what I did.

            Don’t think that goes unnoticed.

            I’m not excusing Hamas. The fact that you read what I did says that you are either responding in bad faith, didn’t read my response very carefully, or are stupid. I’ll go with the middle one to be generous.

            I don’t excuse Hamas. I don’t control Hamas, and much more importantly, I don’t pay for the weapons that Hamas use.

            I pay, or rather my country pays, for the weapons that Israel uses to bomb apartment building, schools, and hospitals.

            Hamas has killed somewhere between 1000-2000 civilians in this conflict, and that is being generous because we know that a large number of causalities were from Israel enacting the Hannibal directive and intentionally killing their own to keep them from being made prisoners (If Israel gets to grab 11,400 West Bank civilians without trial or due process and call them prisoners, then Hamas gets to do the same). Furthermore, if we count anyone who was in the IDF or the IDF’s military reserves as active military, then the number of civilians goes WAAAAY down. Remember that the IDF considers the trashmen, police, and hospital administrators as active combatants with Hamas affiliation. So, once again, if that is the standard that Israel is setting then it applies to all parties, including Israelis.

            Israel, by all best estimates, has killed somewhere between 100,000-200,000 civilians. That is between 5% - 10% of the ENTIRE POPULATION OF GAZA. In all honesty, the number is probably higher.

            That is completely ignoring the systemized rape and torture camps that Israel has set up, and the Israeli media discovered. Also, something that there is no evidence that Hamas has set up.

            Acting like those two numbers are equivalent, or pointing out that Israel is quantitatively a minimum of 2 orders of magnitude worse, or that the two sides are the same is either stupidity, or evil. Take your pick.

            None of this is justifying Hamas. It is pointing out how much more fantastically, cartoonishly fucking evil the Israeli government is.

            You should ask yourself why you view the above as justifying Hamas. You might discover something.

            • GeneralInterest@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              I’m not excusing Hamas. The fact that you read what I did says that you are either responding in bad faith

              The fact that you seem so upset with me saying that killing civilians is bad no matter who does it implies to me that you think it’s fine when some people do it. Or that it’s fine as long as they don’t kill too many people.

              You’re extremely stupid.

              • Count042@lemmy.ml
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                2 months ago

                I’m upset that you want to equate ~1000 to ~150000. And it is extremely stupid to think that it won’t be noticed that you think pointing out the disparity between those numbers is the same thing as defending Hamas. Why is that? You still didn’t answer that. Almost like you’re afraid to address that. At least have the courage of your beliefs.

                By the standard of ‘civilians have been killed’ every country ever involved in a war is equally evil, which is occipitally not true.

                • GeneralInterest@lemmy.world
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                  2 months ago

                  “Killing is fine as long as your numbers aren’t too high”

                  It’s just a dumb take isn’t it.

                  Edit: you’ll try to say “that’s not what I’m saying” but it’s what you’re suggesting, by saying that Hamas are somehow more moral. What I’m suggesting is that maybe they’re both bad. Also, if Hamas had the same amount of weaponry that Israel has, do we really think Hamas would hold back?

                  I think the ICJ was correct to want to bring the leaders of Israel and Hamas to trial for war crimes. I don’t think it makes sense to give one side a pass, or say they’re better, when both have killed many innocent people who didn’t deserve death.