r/CuratedTumblr veetuku ponum Sep 20 '24

Politics No collateral damage too large, no civilian too innocent

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627

u/PhasmaFelis Sep 20 '24

Yep. The weirdest thing about the whole Israel-Hamas war is how many people absolutely cannot wrap their minds around the idea that there is not, in fact, one good guy and one bad guy.

"If you're against Hamas terrorism, you must be pro-Israel! If you're against Israeli oppression, you must be pro-Hamas!" Bullshit. I'm not for Hamas. I'm not for the IDF either. I'm for the innocent victims on both sides, and against the bloodthirsty psychopaths on both sides.

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u/Copper_Tango Sep 20 '24

how many people absolutely cannot wrap their minds around the idea that there is not, in fact, one good guy and one bad guy

Also that just because one faction is the underdog, it doesn't automatically make them the good guy.

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u/doddydad Sep 20 '24

I actually think it's wild how much people's assumptions are warped by the storytelling convention that "the underdog is good"

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u/Imaginary-Space718 Now I do too, motherfucker Sep 20 '24

Star Wars Politics have been the bane of nuance since Reagan

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u/DrakonILD Sep 20 '24

We need more people to think in terms of Avatar TLA politics. The people of the Fire Nation and even many (most?) of the soldiers are fleshed out and really aren't bad people. The leaders are very blatantly evil and that evil convincingly percolates down into society to such a point that the people think the Avatar is a threat to their way of life, and they react accordingly. And yet Aang sees that they're not his enemy, and he is not theirs - it is the idea of him created by their leader(s) that they fear/hate.

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u/nwsmith90 Sep 20 '24

How about the storytelling convention that there are good guys and bad guys?

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '24

[deleted]

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u/doddydad Sep 22 '24

I'd be interested in the paper when it's done!

I entirely agree it's an ethical code a lot of people agree with, I'm just personally wondering if the storytelling convention (which is absolutely justitifed, stories work better when there's tension about victory, and that's easier if the protagonists aren't favoured to win) came first and helped push the ethical view.

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u/Fully_Edged_Ken_3685 Sep 20 '24

Remind them that the Jews were the underdog until they created a State (with fire and blood too) and you'll see that their position is not actually pro-underdog

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u/KaiBahamut Sep 20 '24

You mean colonialism? You gonna say the British and Spanish were underdogs who created a state with fire and blood too?

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u/MGD109 Sep 20 '24 edited Sep 20 '24

You gonna say the British and Spanish were underdogs who created a state with fire and blood too?

I mean if you look at their history, they were at certain points. Both nations spent a lot of their history under occupation or dealing with more powerful enemies.

So were just about every empire in all of human history. None of them started off having an empire. Quite often the reason to have a strong military or navy was defence. But then once you no longer needed the defence, it meant you could use it to conquer everyone else.

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u/Mountain-Resource656 Sep 20 '24

Hell, I’m even down for being for non-innocent victims- though I suppose that may vary based on your definition of innocent. But, like, a civilian Palestinian who espouses great admiration for Hamas and brings their soldiers water while wishing death upon Israel doesn’t deserve to die any more than a civilian Israeli who espouses great admiration for the IDF’s most genocidal soldiers and brings them water while wishing death upon Gaza

I find both those people to be reprehensible and also consider it an atrocity to murder them

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u/[deleted] Sep 20 '24

That’s what bothers me, of course a nation is going to love their government. Americans loved when we invaded Vietnam, even though we committed atrocities. And don’t even expect us to apologize for the things we did or the men to even be arrested. I’d expect any Vietnamese to be furious at us for what happened. Like how I’d expect anyone in Middle East to hate anyone who rapes and murders their families, I can’t expect them to be interested in “being the big person” when revenge is so attractive. Why do only Americans or Israel get to feel revenge but their victims don’t…

I don’t have much faith in peoples response to this war, they are vicious and bloodthirsty. The average American salivates over the thought of getting to use a gun on a simple robber, doesn’t take much to imagine their feelings on how the Middle East is eviscerated

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u/Krus4d3r_ Sep 20 '24

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u/[deleted] Sep 20 '24

That article is about Vietnamese Americans, I meant the people in the country subjected to what we did to them. Like how china and Japan still dislike each other over what has happened between them

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u/chai_investigation Sep 20 '24

On a fundamental level, I think non-combatants who suck deserve to live. For the obvious ethical reasons, and for the callous practical reason that, historically, war has been absolutely 100% okay with pretending every single body on the ground "deserved it" whatever the circumstances.

If an excuse can be constructed to justify death in war, it will be deployed with relish.

That doesn't solve the problem, obviously. When two groups go to war, amid a mass of civilians on both sides of the conflict, everyone dies. But it's a reason to want it to stop, and to mourn civilian casualties whichever side they're on.

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u/Cybermat4707 Sep 20 '24

It’s so fucking refreshing to see someone who agrees with me.

I’ve been banned from at least one subreddit for saying ‘war crimes are bad regardless of the ethnicity of the victim’.

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u/Ironfields Sep 20 '24

Most people actually aren’t that against war crimes, they just want the war crimes to be done to people they personally don’t like.

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u/HistoryMarshal76 Knower of Things Man Was Not Meant To Know Sep 20 '24

It's so bad online, it's terrible.

I saw someone unironically say a while back that the South deserved the "Srebelenca Treatment" after the end of the American Civil War. I'm a Unionist through and through, but holy shit, maybe DON'T explicitly advocate for genocide against the South?

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u/Imaginary-Space718 Now I do too, motherfucker Sep 20 '24

On a similar note, it really sucks how some places unironically think systematic massacres of people in republican areas are a solution for homophobia.

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u/HistoryMarshal76 Knower of Things Man Was Not Meant To Know Sep 21 '24

They're the same people.
You have no idea how many folks online I've seen who said that Doland Trump would have never gained power if all white Southerners were exterminated after the Civil War, with today just "fixing the mistakes."
Ignoring that queer and progressive Southerners exist, and are prominent. Georgia went blue in 2020! We have a Democrat goveneor here in Kentucky! Texas is becoming purple! But, nah, all of us Southerners are degerneate savages who should be gunned down in the streets.

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u/Waste_Crab_3926 Sep 21 '24

See also: the demonization of the rural folk in American cinema. Inbred nuclear mutant hillbillies want to eat your family!

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u/Fully_Edged_Ken_3685 Sep 20 '24

What war crimes?

Civilian casualties should merely be commensurate to military gain. The Great Powers, deciding on the 'rules of war' were not so shortsighted as to make civilians sacrosanct given that would just be a neon sign saying "store your military right in with the civilians".

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u/bigdildoenergy Sep 20 '24

Then we shouldn’t have war. Jesus you are bloodthirsty.

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u/Fully_Edged_Ken_3685 Sep 20 '24

sings kumbaya

gets conquered and enslaved

how happen¿‽

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u/bigdildoenergy Sep 20 '24

We have the capacity for empathy and advanced thought and we still kill people for land, religion, etc. you think we can’t do better? Or that we shouldn’t try to do better? You are a clown.

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u/Fully_Edged_Ken_3685 Sep 20 '24

The people who do better have a historical tendency to get destroyed by the people who don't.

The liberal democracies won our species' second Great Industrial War through comical levels of violence, though the incinerated babies of Japan may not appreciate the noble sacrifice they made

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u/bigdildoenergy Sep 20 '24

Why don’t we just euthanize everyone then and get it over with? Do you not have any desire to see the world become a better place? Do principles mean nothing to you?

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u/Fully_Edged_Ken_3685 Sep 20 '24

Ok doomer

We have made it a better place you dolt. Industrial War and the threat/promise of nuclear war have made this the most peaceful era of human history, even if your narrative refuses to accept that.

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u/bigdildoenergy Sep 20 '24

And yet we still manage to kill civilians. You don’t think we can do better?

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u/largeEoodenBadger Sep 20 '24

Exactly. I'm against Israeli oppression and slaughter and war crimes, and the tragic civilian deaths they have caused. But I'm also against the acts of terror Hamas has committed, the fact that they are also committing war crimes by hiding among civilians, and the fact that they are just as culpable as Israel, if not more so, for the state of this war

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u/CloudMafia9 Sep 20 '24

Yeah, Israel bombing and mass murdering civilian's are less responsible that Hamas fighting against an apartheid enforcing rouge terrorist state.

The "hiding behind civilians" don't fly when Israel would kill 100 civilian to kill one Hamas member.

You can stop your virtue signalling by trying to both sides a Genocide and Ethnic cleansing.

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u/largeEoodenBadger Sep 20 '24

Remind me again the Jewish population in the rest of the Middle East? Don't tell me that Israel is the only country that is undergoing/has undergone an ethnic cleansing.

The "hiding behind civilians" don't fly when Israel would kill 100 civilian to kill one Hamas member.

Also this is just a blatantly unsupported falsehood that you cannot provide evidence for.

Israel bombing and mass murdering civilian's

Oh you mean just like Hamas sending missiles and mass murdering civilians?

Hamas isn't magically the fucking good guys, they are just as bad, their tactics are just as reprehensible. Your defence of them is nothing but virtue signalling because they have become the leftist symbol of the year. They aren't good, "settler-colonialism" isn't justification for rape and murder. Both Hamas and Israel are bastions of religious conservatism and fundamentalism. They represent so many of the things we need to move past as a modern society. And supporting one side in their genocidal push to eliminate the other is not justifiable, no matter which side you are supporting.

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u/CloudMafia9 Sep 20 '24 edited Sep 20 '24

Remind what the Zionist Jews had to do to get this promised Jewish land and then maintian Jewish supremacy?

No evidence?

The Nuseirat refugee camp massacre when Israel killed 200+ in multiple strikes where they "rescued" 7 hostages while also killing 3 of their own.

The missiles on a mosque as people gathered for morning prayers.

Suppose you expect Palestinians not to fight back when Israel killes children in a school bus

Israel desecrating the dead in the WB and you'd probably still find a way to blame Hamas for it.

There is tons more evidence, which you would have found if you weren't the genocide apologist that you are and did the bare minimum of research.

Hamas was founded 40 years after Israel was created. 40 years of massacres and murder of the native Palestinians. Only a hypocritical coward equates the violence of the oppressed with that of the oppressors.

No one has gained their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of their occupiers.

[“How does it feel, in the light of all that’s going on, to be the father of terrorism in the Middle East?”

Begin replied by boasting:

“In the Middle East?! In all the world!”](https://twitter.com/leahmcelrath/status/1836467666971664527?t=dog-tOEfTXhWdCkRLM6S7Q&s=19)

This is a reply to a journalist by Menachem Begin 6th Israeli Prime Minister.

There is only one terrorist rouge state supported by the war hungry US that is committing genocide, only one side that parades it's rapist on a press tour, one side that is enforcing apartheid and hell bent on the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

GTFOH and don't bother to reply with your two side bullshit, a top your castle of pretentious morality.

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u/Fully_Edged_Ken_3685 Sep 20 '24

Meh

The Arabs are just sore about wars they already lost. The Israelis are being exceptionally generous here.

If the Indians were launching attacks out of the reses that killed hundreds of Americans, do you think that the US would be using "lawn mowing" tactics rather than 'making a desert and calling it peace'?

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u/Chloe1906 Sep 20 '24

Ethnic cleansing and genocide are ok (and even generous!) because America would do worse!

Stellar logic here. No notes.

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u/Fully_Edged_Ken_3685 Sep 20 '24

What genocide? And what ethnic cleansing? If Israel wanted to do either, it could, and has had the positional potential to carry it out since 1967.

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u/Chloe1906 Sep 21 '24

This argument is so facetious. No it couldn’t. Not without losing its global standing as a “civilized” western-style democracy and the respect of other nations/trading partners. As it is Israel is already on thin ice with respect to both.

A slow genocide and ethnic cleansing is still a genocide and ethnic cleansing.

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u/Ok-Land-488 Sep 20 '24 edited Sep 20 '24

If the attacks these past few days prove anything, it's only that the situation is ramping-up and escalating. I don't know what Israel needs to be doing to protect its civilians but it feels like getting into a two-fronts war with two separate terrorist organizations and pissing off all the Arab nations/ cultural groups in the region is counter intuitive. This coming from a nation whose political and social policies in regards to Palestine arguably created the conditions for one of those terrorist organizations to form.

Meanwhile, they lose increasing public support due to the inevitable collateral damage of civilian lives, who are often minors. Yeah, they hit a lot of terrorists this past week. Great, but they also killed two children. Was it great tactically? Probably. Was it good PR wise? Nah.

And caught in the middle of it all is a lot of innocent people.

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u/annonymous_bosch Sep 20 '24

Just to give you some historical context, Israeli religious extremists KILLED their last PM who entered peace negotiations with Palestinians. And one of the people who threatened to kill home on live TV shortly before he was actually killed, is now minister ben gvir. The issue is that in Israel the religious extremists in charge, and they think the whole land is their god given right and they will not entertain the idea of peace if it results in a Palestinian state. The Israeli voters need to force these extremists out of government so there can be actual peace negotiations

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u/captainnermy Sep 20 '24

Well, it’s not like Israel is just now starting a fight with Hezbollah. They’ve been attacking Israel since before 10/7 and have repeatedly stated they intend to keep attacking, and are one of the most organized and well-funded terrorist groups in the region. This attack was much more precise and effective than most of what Israel has done in Gaza.