While the media reacts with shock and awe over the recent rallies supporting acts of terrorism, many of us are neither shocked, nor awed by this display. In fact, we've been pointing it out for years.
"The civilized among us have decided that war crimes are intolerable, regardless of circumstance, so when people get up and celebrate those attacks as "fighting colonialism" with obvious reference to the colonized west, I have very little sympathy for their stupidity. They have every right to that opinion and even the right to say it out loud, but when it comes from the same crowd with their petty rhetoric about “microaggressions", it says way more about who they are than anything else."
You're right, Ken. Sadly, armchair and keyboard warriors and their brethren on campuses everywhere have no clue how dangerous the real world was during the 20th century and prior generations. Perhaps it's time for them to see their idealist opinions up close and personal, in real time, here in the 21st. Let's airdrop them into Gaza so they can tell the Israelis face-to-face 'where to go'.
Absolutely. Funny thing is, this is the same crowd that goes on and on about how privileged you and I are. The reason they have no clue what it's like in the real world is precisely because of their privilege. Reality will not be kind to these people.
I have to say, a very predictable and unfortunate take.
Finding the most egregious and shocking instances of Hamas apologists or sympathizers, and then holding them up as representatives of ‘progressives’ … seems a little cheap and kinda lazy tbh.
The vast vast majority of progressives would unequivocally condemn Hamas and their atrocities, regardless of what the BLM Chicago’s social media manager temporarily posts to their socials. I mean the very fact that you’re pointing to a Babylon Bee meme as a ‘source’ for these claims is a bit silly, isn’t it?
Social media echo chambers are designed to exacerbate our divisions, and it’s terrible to watch this play out in real-time, the dehumanizing of the ‘other’ group. Nobody is cheering on the rape and murder in the middle east, but there’s a concerted effort to make you think they are.
It’s also important to note that a murderous rampage is now currently ongoing which will claim a hell of a lot more innocent civilian lives than the initial attacks, yet these atrocities enjoy the full support of our governments, with funding from our taxes. We are tacitly (and financially) supporting the murder of children as we speak, so it’s not really a time to be getting on a high horse. The Israeli Defense Forces and Hamas are essentially on the same team here, corrupt powers using brutal violence against innocents to further their corrupt and evil agendas.
This war is not between Israel and Palestine as much as it is between Israel and Hamas. Hamas doesn't give a shit about the Palestinians, and they continually sabotaged every attempt at peace in that part of the world since they were "elected".
The reason I put the word "progressives" in quotes is because they're not progressive at all. The people I'm talking about are precisely the ones mentioned in the article. They are very loud minority that has been able to bully the general populace for years. It looks like they're on the way though. Thankfully.
The Babylon Bee is not a source for this. My sources were on every news station in the country.
If you stand with with Hamas, what is it that you think you're cheering on?
I agree with you, where I disagree with you is on the idea that there are a significant number of people who call themselves "progressives" while 'standing with Hamas'. I think that's made up. The Babylon Bee falls flat because it isn't based on any underlying truth, but rather on a caricature of what the right desperately wants the left to be. This caricature only makes sense to those ensconced within a right-wing echo chamber.
How many of those young people mowed down at that music festival were part of Lehi? Or those old people gunned down at the bus stop? Or the girls who were raped and then executed? Or that pile of babies? How many of them had any involvement in any of this?
A better question: how would you react if you were Palestinian? In the 20s, after the fall of the Ottoman empire, British Palestine was roughly 700k Muslims to some 5,000 Jews. The entire ideology of Zionism, as enacted by Weissman and Ben-Gurion has been to displace that Muslim majority by mass immigration, and indeed most Israelis are of Eastern European origin. I have no real problem with the state of Israel but I feel it must be difficult to be Palestinian. It doesn't seem right that these people have been essentially herded together like cattle onto small strips of land. They actually need travel documents to go anywhere into Israel.
It seems to me like these kind of stomach-churning tactics is the natural result of the inability to raise an army and conduct two-state negotiations "by other means". Whether it is moral or more importantly prudent to militarily castigate a nation is questionable to me. It seems that was Hitler's casus belli in WWII, and isolating places like Iran and North Korea hasn't really worked. Also didn't work with Al-Qaeda.
I'm not sure how one would negotiate with Hamas, since their raison d'etre is literally to kill all the Jews.
Obviously the situation is more complex than can be conveyed on the 6:00 news, but the bottom line here (and the point of this article) is that the way this tragedy was celebrated in the streets of a country like ours is the real new low.
It wasn’t celebrated in the streets of your country. That’s a patently false and ridiculous thing to say. You're making the most terrible accusations towards a vague group you refer to as ‘they’, Yes, an ignorant fool put up a horrific poster in a California University. Yes, there are also morons working for BLM Chicago (wherever that is), and yes, there are morons online, but this is a terrible time to be propagating such nonsense.
Nowhere in this article do they give an example of someone celebrating/endorsing/excusing Hamas. There seems to be a complaint that this union leader wasn’t full-throated enough in his condemnation. The Israeli government are a pack of far-right extremists, Hamas are a pack of far-right extremists. Complaining that there isn’t enough anger at one pack or the other misses the point.
It is factual to say that the people dying are reaping what the Israeli government (not the Israeli people) has been sowing for decades, which is why for decades, people have been calling/begging/demanding the Israeli government please stop sowing, because there is only one outcome of all that sowing and that outcome is the reaping. It is not anti-Israel to say this, nor is it pro-Hamas.
Someone who can make this point far better than I ever could is this 19 year-old Jewish-Israeli woman who saw 110 of her neighbors brutally slaughtered by Hamas terrorists.
She articulately places the ultimate blame where it should be placed: the corrupt far-right Israeli government. Many Israeli citizens agree with her on this, as do I and this union leader. We can’t control what Hamas does, they are terrorists. But our elected governments are now fully supporting the Israeli Defense Forces as they commit genocide, perpetuating the violence into the next generation.
The problem is that many of these "mentally ill people" also happen to be in positions of authority and even more of them are representative of a good portion of our university culture. These students will eventually be leading us.
You should try reading the whole article. A Lehi member was once the Israeli head of state.
The point is actually not to vilify anyone (Palestinians are regularly raped by Israeli security forces, you can Google it for yourself).
The fact of the matter is that "terrorism" (guerilla warfare), rape and murder of innocents have always been implements of regular "legal" warfare. We committed them in the middle east when we were there during the War on Terror, just like the Israelis in Lehi and Irgun pre-1948, just like Palestinians today, just like the IRA during the Troubles. There is nothing particularly special or barbaric about Palestinians or Hamas. And the fact is that the IDF is now repaying the favour in kind with rough parity in terms of civilian casualties.
An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, but to pretend anyone has moral superiority in this conflict, or like the Palestinians are taking things to a new low, is either ignorant of the history of Israel or spinning a narrative.
The point of this article was not to pick one side or the other - the whole thing is shit, as you rightly pointed out. None of this excuses what happened on October 7th, nor does it excuse the response from the sociopaths among us.
Well, if our government were to make it mandatory that you have to show a passport proving that you denounce Hamas in order to keep your job, then I could understand your comparison. But they're not going to do that, are they? Because that would be ridiculous.
"The civilized among us have decided that war crimes are intolerable, regardless of circumstance, so when people get up and celebrate those attacks as "fighting colonialism" with obvious reference to the colonized west, I have very little sympathy for their stupidity. They have every right to that opinion and even the right to say it out loud, but when it comes from the same crowd with their petty rhetoric about “microaggressions", it says way more about who they are than anything else."
You're right, Ken. Sadly, armchair and keyboard warriors and their brethren on campuses everywhere have no clue how dangerous the real world was during the 20th century and prior generations. Perhaps it's time for them to see their idealist opinions up close and personal, in real time, here in the 21st. Let's airdrop them into Gaza so they can tell the Israelis face-to-face 'where to go'.
Absolutely. Funny thing is, this is the same crowd that goes on and on about how privileged you and I are. The reason they have no clue what it's like in the real world is precisely because of their privilege. Reality will not be kind to these people.
I have to say, a very predictable and unfortunate take.
Finding the most egregious and shocking instances of Hamas apologists or sympathizers, and then holding them up as representatives of ‘progressives’ … seems a little cheap and kinda lazy tbh.
The vast vast majority of progressives would unequivocally condemn Hamas and their atrocities, regardless of what the BLM Chicago’s social media manager temporarily posts to their socials. I mean the very fact that you’re pointing to a Babylon Bee meme as a ‘source’ for these claims is a bit silly, isn’t it?
Social media echo chambers are designed to exacerbate our divisions, and it’s terrible to watch this play out in real-time, the dehumanizing of the ‘other’ group. Nobody is cheering on the rape and murder in the middle east, but there’s a concerted effort to make you think they are.
It’s also important to note that a murderous rampage is now currently ongoing which will claim a hell of a lot more innocent civilian lives than the initial attacks, yet these atrocities enjoy the full support of our governments, with funding from our taxes. We are tacitly (and financially) supporting the murder of children as we speak, so it’s not really a time to be getting on a high horse. The Israeli Defense Forces and Hamas are essentially on the same team here, corrupt powers using brutal violence against innocents to further their corrupt and evil agendas.
This war is not between Israel and Palestine as much as it is between Israel and Hamas. Hamas doesn't give a shit about the Palestinians, and they continually sabotaged every attempt at peace in that part of the world since they were "elected".
The reason I put the word "progressives" in quotes is because they're not progressive at all. The people I'm talking about are precisely the ones mentioned in the article. They are very loud minority that has been able to bully the general populace for years. It looks like they're on the way though. Thankfully.
The Babylon Bee is not a source for this. My sources were on every news station in the country.
If you stand with with Hamas, what is it that you think you're cheering on?
I agree with you, where I disagree with you is on the idea that there are a significant number of people who call themselves "progressives" while 'standing with Hamas'. I think that's made up. The Babylon Bee falls flat because it isn't based on any underlying truth, but rather on a caricature of what the right desperately wants the left to be. This caricature only makes sense to those ensconced within a right-wing echo chamber.
The Bee is satire. It's not a "source" for anything other than entertainment, and it's a good one for that.
Ignorant and wrong as usual, Ken. Something in the water in Morden I think...
Here, learn something today 😏
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehi_(militant_group)
Got a few questions for you, Symon:
How many of those young people mowed down at that music festival were part of Lehi? Or those old people gunned down at the bus stop? Or the girls who were raped and then executed? Or that pile of babies? How many of them had any involvement in any of this?
And were you out celebrating this week?
A better question: how would you react if you were Palestinian? In the 20s, after the fall of the Ottoman empire, British Palestine was roughly 700k Muslims to some 5,000 Jews. The entire ideology of Zionism, as enacted by Weissman and Ben-Gurion has been to displace that Muslim majority by mass immigration, and indeed most Israelis are of Eastern European origin. I have no real problem with the state of Israel but I feel it must be difficult to be Palestinian. It doesn't seem right that these people have been essentially herded together like cattle onto small strips of land. They actually need travel documents to go anywhere into Israel.
It seems to me like these kind of stomach-churning tactics is the natural result of the inability to raise an army and conduct two-state negotiations "by other means". Whether it is moral or more importantly prudent to militarily castigate a nation is questionable to me. It seems that was Hitler's casus belli in WWII, and isolating places like Iran and North Korea hasn't really worked. Also didn't work with Al-Qaeda.
I'm not sure how one would negotiate with Hamas, since their raison d'etre is literally to kill all the Jews.
Obviously the situation is more complex than can be conveyed on the 6:00 news, but the bottom line here (and the point of this article) is that the way this tragedy was celebrated in the streets of a country like ours is the real new low.
It wasn’t celebrated in the streets of your country. That’s a patently false and ridiculous thing to say. You're making the most terrible accusations towards a vague group you refer to as ‘they’, Yes, an ignorant fool put up a horrific poster in a California University. Yes, there are also morons working for BLM Chicago (wherever that is), and yes, there are morons online, but this is a terrible time to be propagating such nonsense.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-doug-ford-jewish-groups-fred-hahn-cupe-israel/
Nowhere in this article do they give an example of someone celebrating/endorsing/excusing Hamas. There seems to be a complaint that this union leader wasn’t full-throated enough in his condemnation. The Israeli government are a pack of far-right extremists, Hamas are a pack of far-right extremists. Complaining that there isn’t enough anger at one pack or the other misses the point.
It is factual to say that the people dying are reaping what the Israeli government (not the Israeli people) has been sowing for decades, which is why for decades, people have been calling/begging/demanding the Israeli government please stop sowing, because there is only one outcome of all that sowing and that outcome is the reaping. It is not anti-Israel to say this, nor is it pro-Hamas.
Someone who can make this point far better than I ever could is this 19 year-old Jewish-Israeli woman who saw 110 of her neighbors brutally slaughtered by Hamas terrorists.
https://twitter.com/orlybarlev/status/1712305162042093890
She articulately places the ultimate blame where it should be placed: the corrupt far-right Israeli government. Many Israeli citizens agree with her on this, as do I and this union leader. We can’t control what Hamas does, they are terrorists. But our elected governments are now fully supporting the Israeli Defense Forces as they commit genocide, perpetuating the violence into the next generation.
Nobody is celebrating Hamas outside a few mentally ill people on the fringe. Which is basically how I'd describe you as well Ken.
The problem is that many of these "mentally ill people" also happen to be in positions of authority and even more of them are representative of a good portion of our university culture. These students will eventually be leading us.
Student groups have no authority.
You should try reading the whole article. A Lehi member was once the Israeli head of state.
The point is actually not to vilify anyone (Palestinians are regularly raped by Israeli security forces, you can Google it for yourself).
The fact of the matter is that "terrorism" (guerilla warfare), rape and murder of innocents have always been implements of regular "legal" warfare. We committed them in the middle east when we were there during the War on Terror, just like the Israelis in Lehi and Irgun pre-1948, just like Palestinians today, just like the IRA during the Troubles. There is nothing particularly special or barbaric about Palestinians or Hamas. And the fact is that the IDF is now repaying the favour in kind with rough parity in terms of civilian casualties.
An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, but to pretend anyone has moral superiority in this conflict, or like the Palestinians are taking things to a new low, is either ignorant of the history of Israel or spinning a narrative.
Hey Ken why can't you respond to a nuanced comment like this? Too many big words hurt your Morden-educated brain?
Sorry Symon, did I hurt your feelings?
The point of this article was not to pick one side or the other - the whole thing is shit, as you rightly pointed out. None of this excuses what happened on October 7th, nor does it excuse the response from the sociopaths among us.
So the IRA were also inexcusable? Are you essentially arguing that resistance is wrong? What does that imply about the convoy...
Well, if our government were to make it mandatory that you have to show a passport proving that you denounce Hamas in order to keep your job, then I could understand your comparison. But they're not going to do that, are they? Because that would be ridiculous.