If I don’t clickbait the title people don’t click.
With the recent events happening in Gaza, I decided to first tackle this line of argument in my essay Zionism is antisemitism, and Palestine.
People were quick to say “yes Israel is bad, but Hamas…” (kidnapped 200 people, killed 1000, take your pick).
When you’re saying this, you’re actually saying that one israeli is worth 7 Palestinians. Read that again if you need to; it’s an ethnosupremacist position.
What is the logical conclusion of this argument? What is it supposed to achieve except convey empty platitudes and declaring to the world that you just don’t care enough to have any valuable input?
It’s fine not to care. I’m not your dad, I’m not going to try and change you.
But don’t declare it publicly. Don’t proudly say “well actually both sides are bad”. You don’t look smarter or wiser than anyone else who is taking a clear stance. You’re not taking the “middle ground”. Everyone who has taken sides and is trying to be productive about this (and not just the Gaza genocide, but really any situation where you can apply “both sides”) really doesn’t have time for this holier-than-thou bullshit.
Gaza “kidnapped” 200 settlers and that’s a war crime apparently. It’s not really, but whatever. Let’s say it is. Israel has killed 7000+ Palestinians in retaliation, now likely more than 10k as they cut off communications in Gaza last night.
Both sidesers: what’s your solution to this. If you say anything other than “I should not get involved” then you don’t actually believe both sides are bad and you are picking a side. It’s time you realize where you stand.
Two things can be bad at the same time. For example, Isreal stealing land from Palestinians is bad, and Israel doing a genocide on Palestinians is also bad. Those 2 things are bad at the same time!
I find that, more often that not, the people who say those words will later proceed to disproportionally condemn only one of those things and bother themselves little with the other. “Both China and the US can be bad”, they say, and then proceed to spend infinitely more energy and time condemning the former and barely acknowledging the latter. Empty words, nothing more.
“Both sides bad” is how liberals adapt to the cognitive dissonance of personally disliking the idea of killings while living in a society that requires ongoing killings to function. If they really didn’t care, it’s way easier be a full-throated Zionist in the empire. It’s popular, it costs you nothing, and you don’t even have to think about it. To acknowledge that the empire requires every death to maintain the imperial standard of living is to completely alienate yourself from the rest of imperial society. Well adjusted people that don’t already hate their lives generally aren’t in a huge hurry to completely alienate themselves from everyone they know in real life over an issue that only exists on TV for them. Their humanity is in conflict with their class interest, and the adaptation is to focus their attention on the killings that don’t put them directly at odds with their imperial peers: You’re allowed to cry for the civilians as long as you condemn Hamas. You can criticize Netanyahu as long as you support “Israel’s right to defend itself”. You can dislike war, police shootings, mass incarceration, and poverty, so long as you pay your taxes and keep voting for people who will keep doing those things.
I do agree with the liberals that it’s bad when Hamas kills civilians in their fight against Israeli apartheid, which is why I believe Israel must be destroyed and replaced with a non-apartheid Palestinian state where Jews and Arabs can live together, so civilians stop dying.
The hostage thing is a great example of how liberals start from a conclusion and then find evidence to fit that conclusion: Hamas is bad not only because they killed people but also because they took old women and children hostage, the monsters. Meaning that, even if Hamas had not killed anyone, only taken hostages, they would still side with Israel. I have zero doubts that if Hamas had only kidnapped IDF soldiers libs would still be demanding unequivocal condemnations and talking about Israel’s right to defend itself.
Not to mention tiny little detail of Isntreal holding millions of hostages in Gaza.
