Where supposed to discuss and understand the animals’ feelings.
I've been conflicted over the years of what the right position is but I'm now convinced more than ever that there is only one way this will ever end. Might as well get it over with.
“Wipe them out” is a pretty rational response. Most of our Allies in the international community, including Israel, supported our “wipe them out” stance following 9/11.
Why should we not support Israel accordingly? Motivations are unimportant at this point.
This is a tough discussion to have with emotions running high and these images streaming in. But here goes:
1. The rhetoric on here is tending towards full-on genocide of Palestinians. Dehumanizing the Palestinians is helpful only if your ultimate goal is to justify killing all of them. I get where that desire comes from--anger. And for the Israelis--fear. I feel the draw of it, too. But there are nearly 2 million Palestinian human beings living in Gaza. Are they
all at fault? The babies? The little children? The common man? (If the goal posters are talking about is destroying Hamas (and Hezbollah?) as an organization and its people, I agree. But as we've seen over the last 20+ years, killing a pernicious ideology isn't something we are very good at.)
2. This is a travesty and it's going to get much worse. The current horrors were inflicted by groups of Palestinians. They are the most directly at fault for what will come. And they can only have undertook these horrible, inexcusable actions because they looked upon the Israelis as evil animals. From what I've seen, that outlook is rampant in Palestinian society. The flip-side of that coin is true, too, but less so among Israeli society, where a lesser % feel Palestinians are evil and need to be exterminated. But there are enough, I think, to make this a real concern and puts a Palestinian genocide in play as a real risk.
3. No, I am not drawing a moral equivalence between the two societies, and no, I don't consider the IDF and Hamas morally equivalent, either. Obviously, Israel has to protect itself. To do that, it is now going to have to kill a lot of people, and because of the way Hamas operates, that's going to include more innocents than it would otherwise.
But we don't have to be gleeful about it and we don't have to be callous or ignorant of the human suffering that is about to occur to innocents throughout the region, do we?
4. In terms of US interests or even Israeli, is it really a good idea to "level" Gaza? Exterminate all Palestinians within Israel? Think of the regional repercussions. Think of how the Muslim community will blame the world-wide Satan, the USA for it. This is EXACTLY what Hamas wants--they know they can never militarily defeat Israel, so they want to keep provoking it and chipping away at its international legitimacy so that the regional powers will come in and destroy it. They do this by downplaying their acts and then amplifying, televising, tweeting, etc. all IDF acts as much as possible.
5. If we aren't sending troops to Ukraine, do we really want to put boots on the ground again in the Middle East? How many wars can we fight? How many can we afford?
www.theguardian.com
