If you are expecting to read my usual Left Coast column, I tell you now that you will be disappointed. I write, today, from a place of horror—about the massacre unleashed against civilians in Israel this past week, and about the morally cretinous bloodlust reaction some who fashion themselves as being on the “left” seem to have experienced in its aftermath, but also in despair at the ghastly collective punishments being unleashed from the air on Gaza residents by Netanyahu’s far-right government and the Israeli military.
I'm sorry, but this is like asking me to sympathize with Nazis when Warsaw rose up.
I don't care how many Nazi kids are killed, or how many Nazi civilians die.The simple answer is do not be a genocidal apartheid ethnostate and do not support a genocidal apartheid ethnostate.Israel sacrificed its moral support when it asked us to look away during its atrocities.
EDIT: Nazi kids are not a thing. I apologize. I was way too hasty. I'm leaving it up as a reminder for others to keep a cooler head.
The most I would say is “it’s unfortunate that innocent children died, their parents shouldn’t have put them in that situation.”
Israel chose to put those kids in harm's way by inciting the conflict, but you should still care that they died. They didn't ask to be born into this mess and had no choice in becoming collateral damage. Take a break from gazing into the abyss.
War is terrible and the loss of any human life is a tragic and untenable waste but, as an American, children getting gunned down is just a Tuesday. I'm more concerned with the actions the deaths of these particular children will precipitate. Any sort of overly performative grief will only play into that
Sorry you're so hollowed out by the brutality of the world we live in that you're numb to the deaths of children.
Children die every day. You only care about the ones you're told to
Hope you find one that's worth your while to care about.
First, you aren't wrong and I want to complement you on you seeing the human lives here. It is important!
To give a
reply, the only way I can grieve and denounce the violence is by pointedly withholding that grief precisely because that grief is weaponized by Israel to commit more atrocities. This removes the shield Israel uses and exposes them to their own horror.
To put it another way, I will also withhold support for an abuser because an abuser will use that as a means of defending and continuing their actions. Keeping that support from them, however objectively legitimate that support is, forces them to confront their own actions.
I think this is where we're all at tbh.
I think my solution is to ensure that the culpability isn't misattributed, which is why I emphasized that the blame for their deaths lies with Israel.
An honest-to-goodness Truth and Reconciliation would make great strides for proper attribution.
That's a long way off, but I would like to live to see the day.
He I justed posted a Big Joel twitter video where he says exactly that about the grief thing!
I just watched it. He says it much better than I did!
He's good with words.
On a slightly less blood-thirsty note, nazi kids aren't a thing, at best they are victims of propaganda.
But parents bear full brunt of responsibility, either by moving to israel or, using brainwormed chomsky argument, by who they vote for.
That's a good point. I was too hasty.
Every 18 year old Fascist soldier is a tragedy. We failed to rescue them from Fascism before they could be made in to monsters. : (
Nazi kids down the street just made fun of me and my Simpsons backpack. So think again.
Steal their ice cream and spoil season 25 arc
The Nazis are also responsible for putting their citizens in harm’s way by forcing people resist or retaliate out of rage.
Yeah, well if I was a Soviet soldier who'd had his family starved to death for generalplan ost and then liberated a death camp I would struggle to not hold every adult German personally culpable.
Shocking that they had as much appetite for mercy as they did. And I'm glad they did, but I still wonder how they softened their hearts.