The problem I have with the “both sides” argument is while I agree we should not approve of Hamas’ actions, Israel routinely murders civilians without consequence. We tut and tsk but we still send them basically unlimited aid and approval.
Yes both sides behave badly but one side does so with our explicit support.
Don’t forget how Israel sells world-class spyware to despots and dictators, who use it to terrorise journalists and political opponents.
IDF soldiers have murdered plenty of children. It is routine and I don’t care if they are protesting, they are entitled to protest oppression.
Hamas are disgusting and Israel are cunts but Hamas is because of what Israel does.
We (the EU at least) also send a lot of aid to Palestinians.
Israel should be sanctioned and decolonized like South Africa was.
And I, for one, believe that that would have happened a long time ago if the Palestinians had followed the Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi playbook.
Perhaps I am wrong. Like the rest of the world, I also don’t have the solution for this quagmire.
The experiment has actually been running already. The Gaza Strip is run by Hamas, which is violent and pushes back against Israel however they can. The West Bank is run by Fatah, which has been attempting to keep good relations with Israel and work with them.
Despite that, the West Bank has seen a continuing encroachment of illegal Israeli settlers, continuing violence directed at Palestinians, both by the settlers moving in there and by the Israeli army. The reason the border with Gaza was so ill-defended was because Netanyahu had moved much of the force usually stationed there into the West Bank. Palestinian deaths in the West Bank has been rising.
I don’t think the Mahatma Ghandi approach is likely to work in the Middle East. At least no better than any other approach people have been trying has been working there.
Development aid, not weapons as the west supplies to Israel. But otherwise you’re right. The whole region should be disarmed.
Thing also is that those people were also hated during thier time and also called terrorists. There’s no good options for a leader sadly.
A lot of people seem the think he was only regarded well once released from prison. I certainly didn’t know much about him until then.
Yet Only Fools and Horses was made in 1981, and they lived in Nelson Mandela House. So even in the UK we knew South Africa was on the wrong side of history. And we should know, we wrote most of it…
This is the sort of thing that reminds me never to trust the accepted wisdom of internet groups.
Gandhi after being educated in England was only a little less racist then everyone else when he first went to South Africa and made the famous comment you’re referring to… He then had his awakening against oppression and began to fight for an end to racism, one of the main popular scandals against Gandhi in South Africa was that the medical corp he set up would give aid to whoever needed it first regardless of rank, colour or ethnicity. The rest of his life he wrote and fought for the rights of all.
But of course ‘popular person was actually bad’ is a fun hot take so of course it’s going to be banded around without any nuance.
