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I think there are more than a few people who feel that Israel and Hamas are both bad actors here.
I hope you're right, because that hasn't been my experience.
They get downvoted or banned and tend to post less and less because of it. It's one of those social media echo chamber things.
72% of Palestinians say the October 7th attack was justified. It's just just a few Hamas fighters hiding among completely innocent civilians. Most of them actively want the violence to continue, just not aimed at them.
But most isn't all, and it's hard to blame an eight year old who has been told his whole life that his greatest calling is to sacrifice himself to kill some Jews while he sees an IDF soldier shooting out his brother's kneecap.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/poll-shows-palestinians-back-oct-7-attack-israel-support-hamas-rises-2023-12-14/
There are no good guys here. I'd be happy if we reduced or stopped Israel funding. But that's not gonna make me fly a Palestinian flag while cheering for them like a sports team.
Those of us who feel like both are to blame tend to be outshouted by the "I ALWAYS STAND WITH ISRAEL NO MATTER WHAT THEY DO" and the "HAMAS ARE JUST FREEDOM FIGHTERS SO ANYTHING THEY DO IS JUSTIFIED" groups. And if we speak up to point out that both groups have issues, we get attacked by both groups for not being on a side and especially for not being on their side.
One of the big problems with the Middle East is that it's a messy situation and people like simple narratives. They don't want to hear a hundred plus years of attacks, revenge attacks, generational trauma, etc. That's not easy to resolve. Instead, people want to know that A is always good and B is always bad. That's nice and simple and easy to fix. You just eliminate the bad people and all is well.
Sadly, the real world is rarely so black and white.
As an Irish person I can say with some experience that what Hamas is doing is not justified but it is pretty much inevitable. And unless Israel are really going to continue their genocide, all they've done is perpetuate this inevitability.
It’s just super fucking annoying that all of our politicians are stuck in zero-sum tribal thinking, and cannot comprehend that most rational people think Hamas AND the Israeli government are complete psychos, and that the vast majority of Palestinian and Israeli civilians (specifically excluding “settlers”, who are violent, racist, theocratic, nationalist pieces of shit) are simply caught in the middle.
Weird, we only seem to meme about Israel...
I don't use tiktok as I think it makes us dumber but I imagine the ratio is relatively similar.
How many tik toks have you seen about the long history of peace offerings Hamas has refused?