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.
    • UmbraVivi [he/him, she/her]
      ·
      1 year ago

      I am picking a side you dingdong. That doesn't mean I want the side I'm rooting for to ethnically cleanse the other, holy fuck.

        • BeamBrain [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          Hamas does not have a policy of completely exterminating of all Israelis. You are, despite nominally supporting Hamas, implicitly promoting anti-Hamas Zionist lies.

                • autismdragon [he/him, they/them]
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Ok but the fact that they took hostages that are just "regular settlers" rather than active service members doesn't mean Hamas's goals are to wipe out every settler. And you are acting like if people don't side with the idea of wiping out every settler we aren't siding with Palestine. But thats not even the goal of Hamas. You just made that shit up in your head.

                    • BeamBrain [he/him]
                      ·
                      1 year ago

                      Settler/indigenous is a material relation though, which means it can change if the political landscape changes. If the Palestinians emerge victorious and create a Palestinian state and everyone living in that territory becomes a Palestinian, then those former Israelis aren't settlers anymore. Realistically that process involves killing or driving off the settlers in large numbers to destroy the strength and morale of their political movement, but they aren't some kind of gray goo that you have to eradicate down to the last molecule. Historically most decolonization movements, e.g. in South Africa and Algeria, just won the war, a large majority of settlers fucked off because they didn't get to be colonial lords anymore, and the rest capable of being decent human beings stayed, paid some measure of restitutions, and remained as citizens of the new indigenous state.

                • Helmic [he/him]
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  if your politics have you conclude you can do nothing and deserve to die, even that you should do something that you then don't do, you don't have actionable politics. you have shit politics. hamas are not doing some 200 IQ definition stretching, they literally mean zionists because they need to go shoot people and need a functional definition of who they are at war with.

                  you having some martyr complex to excuse inaction does not mean it makes any sense to wish death on random ass civilians or literally babies. the point of whoever it was you read was almost certainly not that because you're white you should be OK with being murdered, it's that you should take action. when we talk about the attacks being an inevitable reaction to decades of occupation, that does not mean we think randos who were living where they were born deserved to die.

                  it's just especially absurd because you're only saying that because you know damn well you're perfectly safe and that even in the event of a liberation movement they aren't going ti try to murder you. you want to have these callous, unhinged takes and pretend you're applying it equally to yourself when you know that won't happen.

        • Helmic [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          Are you actually on the side of Palestinians? You seem more like a bog standard online leftist that has done the bare minimum of recognizing a genocide for what it is and has taken that to mean they can just say whatever edgy nonsense pops into their head and pretend that's anticolonialism. "Oh, you can't criticize me for saying shit that Zionists pretend are the actual stakes of the conflict because I have right opinions."

          You are not special here. You are not more outraged than anyone else. You are valuing the clout of appearing more "extreme" to a handful of internet leftists over the damage of giving Zionists screenshots of Palestine supporters actually wanting to commit genocide. If you're worried about what side people are on, first worry whether you're even helping the one you pretend to care about.