It’s become cliche to claim that your side is innocent and just while the opponents are Hitler and evil.
The idea is to cut through all the confusion and nuance and make it a simple decision.
Trump is evil. Biden is evil. Putin is evil. China is evil. Etc.
It gets tiring, and I try to resist it.
Except this time.
Hamas is evil.
An argument that doesn’t make sense to me:
“Our country is subject to terrible abuses and oppression by these other people. Therefore, it is justified to behead babies and rape women. We have to do it to defend ourselves and fight for our freedom.”
Even if you accept for a moment that they need to fight for their freedom *by any means necessary*, there is no logical link between the first sentence and the second. Atrocities don’t actually forward the cause of freedom in any rational way, ethics aside. They’re merely a vent for the anger that their perception of their situation (accurate or otherwise) has induced. This argument simply says that people who have a grievance have an unlimited right to any sort of vengeance they might wish to take, regardless of the complicity of their targets or the effectiveness of their actions to improve the situation.
And don’t give me the line that this draws attention to their situation. There’s nobody who would care anyway who wasn’t already aware of the situation, and it gains at least as much negative reaction as sympathy.
I agree with all that, although I expect the lunatics in the Middle East to show lunacy. I’m more concerned with groups in America that are supporting Hamas.
This really is a binary thing. If you support these monsters, you’re a monster.
I was referring to the Americans who would use those forms of rhetoric to excuse them, as well. I agree that I have no expectations of Hamas, I’m just both bemused and infuriated by westerners making arguments that some level of oppression justifies atrocities, as though there is any pragmatic or moral sense in which one leads to the other.
The only sense in which one leads to the other is the human desire for bloody vengeance, which decent people view as explicable but still reprehensible when held against those in no way responsible.
Hamas is evil. Sure I can say that.
I also don’t understand why there were a million dead Iraqis because of the gulf war when Saddam had no chemical weapons. Syria has chemical weapons. Russia has chemical weapons which they sell to Syria and whomever. Some Saudis sponsored by a nutjob in Afghanistan/Pakistan took down the World Trade Center, and we attack Iraq. Makes sense.
And, it seems the IDF is off to the races to commit their own war crimes. Whether leveling of civilian districts or now there’s reports of using phosphorous bombs in Gaza and Lebanon. I’m sure the IDF will give Hamas a run for the money as well who can be worse.
There’s only losers it seems. I have no solution to fix a 3,000 year old war.
It seems you _can’t_ say that, unreservedly anyhow.
It took you all of eight words before you instead talked about Iraq, Syria, Russia, 9/11, Gulf War 2, seemed to accuse the IDF of war crimes comparable to Hamas, Manachem Begin, and the King David Hotel.
Over the last week a lot of anti-Israel types were naturally asked to condemn Hamas. Were I such a person, and was nevertheless disgusted by Hamas’ actions, I think I’d give people the unreserved condemnation they wanted which I actually felt and leave it at that. This would not only convey my real feelings, but prevent my opponents from using my apparent inability to condemn gang rape and mass murder without qualifying it to besmirch my cause. If some of my fellow travellers then brought up things I didn’t like about Israel, I would say something like “Now is not the day. I’m opposed to Israel and have a long record of opposing [whatever the anti-Israel types get worked up about], but this is monstrous. First we mourn with the victims, and only then can we return to our cause with clear hearts.”
That so many anti-Israel types can’t bring themselves to do even this, but have to “balance” any criticism of Israel’s enemies — even when they’re at their most barbaric — with other commentary to mitigate it, usually at about a 10:1 ratio at least, suggests to me there’s something deeper going on.
I’d pretend I don’t know what that might be, but I think I do, even if I can’t prove it.
I have opponents? Who? Hamas? Israel? They know who I am? I’m more than a rando on some barely read blog in some dark corner of the intertubes? Wow, I’ve gone up in status.
Hamas so far is winning the victims of atrocity war. Israel is guilty of destroying hospitals that are still standing. They baited Israel to do what they knew Israel would do. Now, they’re hoping that Syria, Iran and others will join in to exterminate Israel.
Sometimes I wonder if the world is any different than Tony Soprano, Donald Trump, or some random sociopath thinks it is… my tribe vs your tribe, my interest vs your interests, and might makes right.
It’s a wonder…. Some Republicans couldn’t give a shit about Ukraine, but now they’re upset about Israel and want to defend it. OTOH, half the EO world on Twitter thinks that if Israel does the same* thing Russia does, then the Jooz are evil but Russia is still good because Zelensky the Joo or something like that.
If it makes you feel good, more power to you.
*not really the same thing. Russia was unprovoked. Israel attacked after being attacked.
Probably some of these Hamas soldiers will be counted as heros and martyrs.
… just like Manachem Begin. He later became PM of Israel.
How is this not a TERRORIST attack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing
If the IRA, Antifa, Hamas, ISIS, or any other group did it, it would be considered a terrorist attack.
People who kill women and children are evil…and sometimes they are revered as heroes.