I didn’t want to direct this question to Americans specifically because, at this point, other countries have shown support to Israel in one or the other way. If my country was financing this, I would be taking the streets. Shit, I’m right now in the hospital but all I can think about is protesting anyway just to feel I did something to stop this madness.
Are you doing something about this? Are you feeling unsettled? How do you feel about all this mess?
EDIT: So, buying Chinese stuff takes the USS Gerald Ford to Gaza’s coast. Also, TIL that that chocolate my cousin gave me when she was 20 and I was 5, (delicious stuff!) made me a slavist-ish. The fact remains, this genocide is being paid and supported by taxpayers money; of course, I was hoping that most of us didn’t pay taxes wishing for this. Thank you all for your responses, some of them were hard to swallow.
Israel is retaliating against civilians for an attack carried out by Hamas. This is what America did in Afghanistan after the attack on the world trade center in 2001. It was dumb and it’s dumb now.
That’s my emotional understanding of the current situation. I supported the invasion of Afghanistan whole-heartedly the night it happened, but I was a child then. 9/11 was upsetting and rockets are exciting. Now, with maturity and hindsight, that invasion was a cruel mistake. I believe this current invasion is also a mistake.
What I see critical about it is that they don’t realy give a fuck about civilians. They don’t target them, but if there a chance to hurt Hamas they don’t realy care that much. Still I realy don’t like the people who are just screaming at you everything bad. I don’t feel remotely qualified to talk specifics about that topic and most people I hear talking about it, especially in the internet are deffenetly not qualified either.
I think most people are qualified to say that killing is bad regardless of the reasons or intent. If the goal of Israel is to put a stop to Hamas attacks then they certainly aren’t going to get there by killing random Palestinians regardless. That is only going to create more people who hate Israel in the long run.
I’d call it “retaliating” against civilians. Actual retaliation would mean hitting the set of people who attacked Israel.
IMO a big source of the problem is that we’re conflating four groups for two groups.
Government A, People A, Government B, People B.
Any time Government A attacks People B, Government B “retaliates” against People A, and vice versa. It’s not actual retaliation it’s forwarding the violence to someone new.
There are tenuous connections between these governments and these peoples, but it’s not like slapping the guy who just slapped you. It’s like slapping his kid.