I genuinely do not know who the bad guys are. S lot of my leftist friends are against Israel, but from what I know Israel was attacked and is responding and trying to get their hostages back.
Enlighten me. Am I wrong? Why am I wrong?
And dumb it down for me, because apparently I’m an idiot.
First, I am not on Israel’s side in this matter. I denounce their historical and ongoing oppression of Palestinians to say the least and generally see a two state solution as an ideal outcome, along with the outcomes you mentioned, dismantling apartheid and establishing self-determination for Palestinians. However I would not condone atrocities to achieve this goal. Just as I am in support of Ukraine’s resistance against Russia, I would not condone any war crimes if they were to commit them. How we achieve our goals matter.
Sure, neither of us are directly affected won’t be the ones deciding, yet here we are expressing our opinions and hopefully having a worthwhile conversation about it. Perhaps all of social media is just political noise, yet us humans seem to like to weigh in on world events.
And yet you used a tired Zionist talking point that amounts to, “what if the people we are oppressing do the same things to us if we stop the oppression?” It was also used for apartheid South Africa, incidentally. And we can see that the oppressed are far more humane than these ethnic supremacists.
But maybe you are anti-Zionist and just picked up this question from others.
The outcomes I mentioned are incompatible with a two-state solution. A two-state solution is bantustans and it was “agreed” to by compradors. It is not a serious proposal, which is why Israel/the US has never attempted to implement it and has instead further oppressed and fragmented Palestinians.
A two-state solution means no right of return, the continuation of the Israeli apartheid ethnostate, and the status quo for Gaza and The West Bank. There can be no state under occupation, with its orchards and homes stolen, with its towns disjointed, with a comprador government installed by Western interests. That is neither sovereignty nor justice and it would not be tolerated by the oppressed.
Define atrocities. Israel will simply shoot and torture peaceful movements. It already has done so many times. Only armed resistance can defeat such an oppressor.
Just as the West labels all Palestinians freedom fighters, they will label actions far lesser than what Israel does on a daily basis “war crimes” when it suits them, just like the ICC seems to basically only go after black African war criminals (Bush and Cheney weren’t tried at the Hague, hmm). Guerilla warfare against an oppressor will not be clean, this is impossible. Intelligence will fail and targets will be colocated, e.g. the IDF has part of its headquarters by a shopping mall. And individuals will do terrible and violent things. Also, Israelis and the West, including the US president, will simply lie, like with the “beheaded babies” narrative. So you will have to prepare yourself to question these narratives and accept a world where the freedom fighters will be accused of war crimes by the usual sources.
Though, if we are speaking of international law, occupied people are allowed to resist their occupiers by any means they deem fit.
I use this platform for chatting and agitation. This convo is in the agitation category, of course. Generally speaking it is important to shout down pro-genocide narratives, whether it is Zionist propaganda or Dems trying to get their voters to tolerate genocide.