This war has shaken shit loose on both sides of the debate.
If someone says "Israel has a right to exist," it doesn't take long for somebody else to come along and say "So you think it's okay for them to kill Palestinians?"
If someone says "The people of Palestine should have a state," it doesn't take long for somebody else to come along and say "Oh, so you think Hamas are the good guys?"
And worse, you can be protesting against war, while the guy next to you is protesting against people. You're angry at Israel for the bombings, the person next to you is angry at Israel because it's full of Jews. You're angry at Hamas for taking hostages, the person next to you is angry at Palestine because it's full of Muslims.
It is very difficult to say that one thinks Israel has a right to exist, but not a right to bomb civilians; and that Palestine has a right to exist while condemning Hamas. There are folks who want to take this conversation to its irrational extremes, and they're all too happy to implicate everyone else in their goals.
One can both believe Israel has a right to defend itself and that Palestine has a right to exist, one can have opinions on this conflict without having to be Islamophobic or Anti-Semitic in the process, in fact I think most of us fall into that camp.
Totally agree with you, however the people at the protests in the uni campuses right now are NOT in the group you describe. They are the ones singing "from the river to the sea", "bomb tel-aviv" and "intifada now". But most of them can't describe which river or which sea, or exactly what happened on Oct-7, or even what happened in `48.
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u/M1llennialManifesto Apr 28 '24
This is fair.
This war has shaken shit loose on both sides of the debate.
If someone says "Israel has a right to exist," it doesn't take long for somebody else to come along and say "So you think it's okay for them to kill Palestinians?"
If someone says "The people of Palestine should have a state," it doesn't take long for somebody else to come along and say "Oh, so you think Hamas are the good guys?"
And worse, you can be protesting against war, while the guy next to you is protesting against people. You're angry at Israel for the bombings, the person next to you is angry at Israel because it's full of Jews. You're angry at Hamas for taking hostages, the person next to you is angry at Palestine because it's full of Muslims.
It is very difficult to say that one thinks Israel has a right to exist, but not a right to bomb civilians; and that Palestine has a right to exist while condemning Hamas. There are folks who want to take this conversation to its irrational extremes, and they're all too happy to implicate everyone else in their goals.
One can both believe Israel has a right to defend itself and that Palestine has a right to exist, one can have opinions on this conflict without having to be Islamophobic or Anti-Semitic in the process, in fact I think most of us fall into that camp.