Here’s a member of Congress telling us that since Israel isn’t well liked, the Israeli women who were raped by Hamas don’t deserve the support of progressives.
And for good measure Jayapal adds rape: “happens in war…however, we have to be balanced about bringing in the outrages against Palestinians.”
No one deserves rape.
No one deserves to be kidnapped.
No one deserves to be killed.
Of course Israel’s people shouldn’t be raped or killed.
We also can’t deny that unfair killing of Palestinian civilians is also happening.
Both things can be true.
This conflict makes people (not connected to either side) feel uncomfortable because of the disproportionate number of Palestinian civilians that have been harmed/killed in comparison to the initial attack by Hamas.
It is hard to justify and support the scale of the IDF’s response. I fear that it will further radicalize the next generation by causing so much widespread trauma to children and youth. I saw a kid on the news crying that his brother and father had been killed in shelling on a refugee camp last night. It’s hard for western civilians to watch because it simply doesn’t seem fair that the civilians have to go through this. And to add to that, there is a contingent of people who attack others on the internet if they don’t agree with all of the actions of the IDF.
I thought Bernie Sanders’ NYT op-ed had the best and most even-handed take on the situation.
The problem with taking an even-handed position is that you get attacked by both sides. I’ve said that both the Israelis and Palestinians deserve the right to live in peace. The entire situation in the Middle East is a Gordian Knot of generational trauma, bloodshed begetting bloodshed, wrongdoings on both sides, and foreign entities egging it on for their own aims. Besides a generic “get rid of Hamas and Netenyahu,” I don’t have any solutions.
However, saying even that can get you attacked. On one side, I’ll be told “the Palestinians are animals and the Israelis need to just wipe them out.” On the other side, I’ll be told “the Israelis are colonizers and the entire country of Israel should be given to the Palestinians with all Jews kicked out.” Both sides will criticize me for not being entirely on their side and for calling out their hatred.
About the only thing that both sides agree on is that my even-handed approach in recognizing the complexity of the situation is wrong and that it’s a simple Good Versus Evil situation. In the past, I’ve tried arguing with people, but it just gets tiring and they don’t change their minds.
If Hamas had livestreamed the slaughter of 1000s of Brits and Americans - if they had beheaded people, raped girls, burnt people alive and slaughtered entire villages.
Nobody would be talking about a ceasefire.
One problem is that folks want to ignore that fact because it doesn’t play into the isreal’s wrongs of the past and present. It doesn’t play into their narrative. So, they in essence deny what Hamas did.
But, what can Isreal do? They still are getting Hamas rocket barrages every day.
As you say, two separate things, but also little alternative.
When Al Queda crashed four airplanes on 11 September, you had TONS of Americans protesting against invading Afghanistan over it, and you had Dubya telling the whole world that you either supported the US in our invasion -or- you were supporting terrorists. It was a bullshit false dichotomy then, and it’s a bullshit false dichotomy now.
Hamas is a terrorist organization. They did terrorist things. Israeli is an apartheid state. They’re committing genocide and war crimes. It’s not true that, “Hamas is a terrorist organization, so anything Israel does is just”, nor is it true that, “the Israeli directly murders and allows the murders of Palestinian non-combatants, therefore Hamas’ use of terrorism and sexual violence is justified”.
You’re the kind of guy that would gladly accept an airplane flying into your world trade center office. Having known people who died that day, you disgust me.
You present no alternatives just rabel rousing.
As I remember, there wasn’t much demonstration over Afghanistan. There was over Iran, which was a stupid war. You better check your facts.
I never justified anything. I look for alternatives that don’t seem to be there. You’re the one justifying Hamas barbaric display
Uh. When did we go to war with Iran again? Are you taking about when the shah was deposed, or the hostage crisis in the late 70s? I’m not sure that this is really relevant here.
As I remember, there wasn’t much demonstration over Afghanistan.
You remember incorrectly. A strong majority believed it was justified. A minority recognized that it was a disproportionate response, and would do more harm than good. I, for one, strongly remember talking to a coworker and saying that we were going to end up killing tens of thousands of uninvolved non-combatants–civilian women and children–because Al Quaeda killed 5,000 Americans. Not only was I right, but bin Laden wasn’t even in Afghanistan when we invaded.
I look for alternatives that don’t seem to be there.
Then you aren’t looking very hard, are you? The alternative has been there since 1947, but Israel won’t accept any solution that doesn’t give them the entirety of their god-promised Zion.
While on the other side it can come to absurd like this:
Hen Mazzig, an ex-IDF soldier
in one case, a professor asked me if I knew how many Palestinians have been raped by IDF forces. I answered that as far as I knew, none.
She triumphantly responded that I was right, because, she said, “You IDF soldiers don’t rape Palestinians because Israelis are so racist and disgusted by them that you won’t touch them.”
And in Israeli academy (!)
According to Dr. Gurevitch, This was a very serious paper that asked two important questions: Is the relative lack of IDF rapes a noteworthy phenomenon, and if so, why is it that there are so few IDF rapes when in similar situations around the world, where rape is so much more common?
The abstract of the paper, authored by doctoral candidate Nitzan, could not find instances of rapes of Palestinian women by the IDF it sought to find, so it was decided that the paper show that “the lack of organized military rape is an alternate way of realizing [particular] political goals.” It continues, “In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it can be seen that the lack of military rape merely strengthens the ethnic boundaries and clarifies the inter-ethnic differences – just as organized military rape would have done.”
Ergo, Nitzan could not find any cases of rape by IDF soldiers of Palestinian women even though Palestinian media constantly accuses Israeli soldiers of this. Apparently distraught over such findings, Nitzan had to twist her thesis to attribute the lack of such rapes to a governmental program instilling in IDF soldiers that the Arab women are sub-human or inferior.
The lack of documented cases of IDF rape does not mean that it doesn’t happen. There are remarkably few documented cases of rape by US military members; about the only time they come up is when civilian courts investigate and prosecute the cases. When the investigation/prosecution is done by the military, they largely seem to disappear.
I would wager that, if there was a truly independent oversight group that had the power to investigate and prosecute allegations of sexual violence by members of the IDF that you would have a very different picture.
Here’s a member of Congress telling us that since Israel isn’t well liked, the Israeli women who were raped by Hamas don’t deserve the support of progressives.
And for good measure Jayapal adds rape: “happens in war…however, we have to be balanced about bringing in the outrages against Palestinians.”
That’s another way of saying, they had it coming.
No one deserves rape. No one deserves to be kidnapped. No one deserves to be killed.
Of course Israel’s people shouldn’t be raped or killed. We also can’t deny that unfair killing of Palestinian civilians is also happening.
Both things can be true.
This conflict makes people (not connected to either side) feel uncomfortable because of the disproportionate number of Palestinian civilians that have been harmed/killed in comparison to the initial attack by Hamas.
It is hard to justify and support the scale of the IDF’s response. I fear that it will further radicalize the next generation by causing so much widespread trauma to children and youth. I saw a kid on the news crying that his brother and father had been killed in shelling on a refugee camp last night. It’s hard for western civilians to watch because it simply doesn’t seem fair that the civilians have to go through this. And to add to that, there is a contingent of people who attack others on the internet if they don’t agree with all of the actions of the IDF.
I thought Bernie Sanders’ NYT op-ed had the best and most even-handed take on the situation.
This is by design.
The problem with taking an even-handed position is that you get attacked by both sides. I’ve said that both the Israelis and Palestinians deserve the right to live in peace. The entire situation in the Middle East is a Gordian Knot of generational trauma, bloodshed begetting bloodshed, wrongdoings on both sides, and foreign entities egging it on for their own aims. Besides a generic “get rid of Hamas and Netenyahu,” I don’t have any solutions.
However, saying even that can get you attacked. On one side, I’ll be told “the Palestinians are animals and the Israelis need to just wipe them out.” On the other side, I’ll be told “the Israelis are colonizers and the entire country of Israel should be given to the Palestinians with all Jews kicked out.” Both sides will criticize me for not being entirely on their side and for calling out their hatred.
About the only thing that both sides agree on is that my even-handed approach in recognizing the complexity of the situation is wrong and that it’s a simple Good Versus Evil situation. In the past, I’ve tried arguing with people, but it just gets tiring and they don’t change their minds.
If Hamas had livestreamed the slaughter of 1000s of Brits and Americans - if they had beheaded people, raped girls, burnt people alive and slaughtered entire villages.
Nobody would be talking about a ceasefire.
One problem is that folks want to ignore that fact because it doesn’t play into the isreal’s wrongs of the past and present. It doesn’t play into their narrative. So, they in essence deny what Hamas did.
But, what can Isreal do? They still are getting Hamas rocket barrages every day.
As you say, two separate things, but also little alternative.
Fuck off with that nonsense.
When Al Queda crashed four airplanes on 11 September, you had TONS of Americans protesting against invading Afghanistan over it, and you had Dubya telling the whole world that you either supported the US in our invasion -or- you were supporting terrorists. It was a bullshit false dichotomy then, and it’s a bullshit false dichotomy now.
Hamas is a terrorist organization. They did terrorist things. Israeli is an apartheid state. They’re committing genocide and war crimes. It’s not true that, “Hamas is a terrorist organization, so anything Israel does is just”, nor is it true that, “the Israeli directly murders and allows the murders of Palestinian non-combatants, therefore Hamas’ use of terrorism and sexual violence is justified”.
You’re the kind of guy that would gladly accept an airplane flying into your world trade center office. Having known people who died that day, you disgust me.
You present no alternatives just rabel rousing.
As I remember, there wasn’t much demonstration over Afghanistan. There was over Iran, which was a stupid war. You better check your facts.
I never justified anything. I look for alternatives that don’t seem to be there. You’re the one justifying Hamas barbaric display
Uh. When did we go to war with Iran again? Are you taking about when the shah was deposed, or the hostage crisis in the late 70s? I’m not sure that this is really relevant here.
You remember incorrectly. A strong majority believed it was justified. A minority recognized that it was a disproportionate response, and would do more harm than good. I, for one, strongly remember talking to a coworker and saying that we were going to end up killing tens of thousands of uninvolved non-combatants–civilian women and children–because Al Quaeda killed 5,000 Americans. Not only was I right, but bin Laden wasn’t even in Afghanistan when we invaded.
Then you aren’t looking very hard, are you? The alternative has been there since 1947, but Israel won’t accept any solution that doesn’t give them the entirety of their god-promised Zion.
Removed by mod
Holy fucking irony, Batman.
While on the other side it can come to absurd like this:
Hen Mazzig, an ex-IDF soldier
And in Israeli academy (!)
The lack of documented cases of IDF rape does not mean that it doesn’t happen. There are remarkably few documented cases of rape by US military members; about the only time they come up is when civilian courts investigate and prosecute the cases. When the investigation/prosecution is done by the military, they largely seem to disappear.
I would wager that, if there was a truly independent oversight group that had the power to investigate and prosecute allegations of sexual violence by members of the IDF that you would have a very different picture.