Palestine has the right to free itself from occupation and apartheid. I don't think any leftist, and even most of the progressive liberals, are opposed to this.
But for decades these words have rung hollow. Outsiders like us, especially in the West, send our thoughts and prayers, go for protests and donate to affiliated orgs, but the situation keeps getting worse. Our governments finds the occupier with billions of dollars in weapons. In face of that, our "solidarity" means very little.
Now, this situation. If this is a war, then from what I've heard, some of the actions are warcrimes - murdering (and worse) to civilians etc. No side should commit such acts, of course. But why the expectation that Palestine's fight for freedom will somehow be more moral than Israel's crimes against them?
Why didn't the first ever report of the IDF killing Palestinian civilians, including children (2023 was the deadliest year for this) result in the West collectively denouncing Israel, with both words and actions? If for decades those are the rules of the war and occupation, why the sudden anger when the other side follows the same rules and not the higher, moral, code that no one granted them?
Settlers are not civilians if they are in illegal settlements. Especially if they are armed and occupying Palestinian land illegally according to the UN.
Casualties inside "Israel" are a fact of war. This is a war and there is only one side with any legitimacy.
That's really all there is to it currently.
war crime is kindof a joke category and usually
plus a bit of "it's not a war crime if you win" like the nukes or "it's not a war crime if you get away with it" like all the chemical weapons the US ever used.yeah those specific guys shouldn't have killed those specific people but there are more heinous crimes to focus on. we can revisit the matter if they spin up an actual holocaust.
The ruling cliques of "the west" have a vested interest in the preservation of the current Isreali state. It is a friendly and permanently embattled nation that serves to destabilize the entier region, making foriegn influence easier and keeping arms trade high.
As such, while Palestinian liberation may be supported by people, it will never be meaningfully acknowledged by governments. Palestinian opression is ignored until it results in violence. Then the response, framed by the media, is to "both sides" the problem, finally culminating in a brokered peace in which Palestinians but not the goverment of Isreal disarm in exchange for nebulous promises.
As for solidarity with Palestine, beyond words and some small material support, we in "the west" run in to the same problem as with most other issues: institutions are set up to funnel power away from the people to a small group of influential individuals, and what few parallal power structures we have built are not strong enough to challenge them yet.
