I remember some people in the arab world took side for ben laden on 9/11 but this time it's happening in the west too.
I see similar sentiments around this war all the time, "Israel deserved this terrorist attack due to imperialism" but again really not much actual support for Hamas.
You can't blame israel for oct 7, ask them to stop their ongoing operations in gaza, not call for the release of hostages, not say a word about the women raped by hamas and gaza civilians, AND pretend to "just want to spare the civilians population". Those people are in practice siding for the hamas, even if they deny it.
At the actual substance level, I also don’t think it’s fair or honest to take “silence” on a topic as evidence of support for it.
In this particular case, I would bet fewer than 0.00001% of the people you’re arguing with are actually okay with (or supportive of) keeping hostages in Hamas’ custody or raping people. You’re battling a cartoon villain that you drew yourself.
Another recent example in Paris as well is the number of people removing "free the hostages" posters in the streets.
And i won't even mention twitter..
This isn't something i've imagined, it's the sad reality. Those people are actively hostile to israelis even if that means supporting the most terrible atrocities commited by hamas.
1. These protestors are actually pro raping Israelis
2. These protestors want a single, specific priority for the protest they organized
And you believe not just that (1) is more likely, but that there’s so little possibility of (2) that you can just discard their entire perspective and accuse them of supporting rape of Israelis without even asking them?
What if a group of men’s rights activists showed up advocating for the men under bombardment? Would the protestors have been wrong to exclude them? Maybe! Arguably! But would their excluding those men’s rights activists have indicated that they are positively “okay with” or perhaps even supportive of the men of Gaza dying? Absolutely not.
That just seems blatantly dishonest. You don’t have the information you think you have.
To be clear: there are people who have the beliefs you’re talking about. Obviously (October 7th speaks for itself). I just think those people are far fewer than you’re perceiving, and it is absolutely necessary for people to be engaging with good criticisms on complex issues like this one with so many lives at stake.
Which is an absolutely horrible stance for a feminist organization. But that's where ideology leads to.
Do you see any other explanation ?
This is not a rhetorical question. I am curious what you make of this. What do you “know” about their opinions based on their failures to organize such demonstrations?
The troubling part is that women are killed almost the same day in the same region, in the same conflict, and i'd even say only the israli ones got targeted as women on purpose and raped. And yet they chose to protest exclusively for the other side.
You should consider asking a few people and actually listening to their answers instead of accusing them of being pro-rape for failing to mention your topics of choice in the same breath.
A lot of people end up with beliefs and attitudes by sheer inertia of those around them and will accordingly have bad answers. Some people don’t though, and they’re the ones who you can both teach and learn from. Thus back to my original point: look for the strong versions of the argument.
the "definitive answer" was for the global historical interest on the israel/arab conflict. But once again, this is another issue than what we were talking about.
Here are a few reasons Americans seem to be so interested in it:
1. We’re paying for a decent chunk of it, both financially and in terms of international political support
2. It cross-cuts American society along very unique dimensions, creating ad-hoc coalitions between people who don’t normally collaborate very much (e.g. far right white supremacists and Zionists, or far left commies and jihadists). These coalitions are already impacting American domestic affairs and will likely influence our upcoming elections.
3. In general it’s reasonable to pay close attention to situations where a thousand people are killed in a terrorist attack under the purview of a western security apparatus or when an urban area is subject to an aggressive counterinsurgency campaign (given that they tend to be humanitarian disasters even in the best of circumstances)
4. This conflict has a very high potential to unravel into a regional and even global conflict given the networks backing each belligerent
How exactly is it odd that people care so much about the situation?
You keep saying "we should ask them, there's probably a better reason for them to act like this than pure hate". So, let me ask you, what do you think that reason could be ?
From several comments up. Seems like a sufficiently plausible explanation not to jump to as cynical and self-serving an explanation as “they think Israeli women deserve to be raped.”
And I’d also not be surprised to see them kick out men’s rights activists doing the same thing. It would be excessively cynical and self-serving to jump to “they think the men of Gaza deserve to be bombed,” too.
“They’re pro rape” is an appalling accusation to level at someone. Doing so with the “evidence” you’ve supplied calls into question your willingness to question your priors and find a real solution. So this will be my last comment on the subject as I think I’ve sufficiently made my point. Have a good holiday season!
It's not about them being pro-rape, it's about them hating israelis more than they like women in general (which is a pretty high level of hate if you're a feminist). It's pure hate and i'm not sorry you're failing to see it for what it is. "Trying to find the best argument" for someone's position only works for people that aren't hypocritical. Otherwise it's just a failed analysis.
Indeed, this hypocrisy is even more important to point out. Do you believe Israeli civilians bear collective guilt for Israel's ongoing war crimes, like you believe Palestinian civilians do?
Back from that time, George W Bush literally said you are either with us or you are with the terrorists, so I feel people are pretty inoculated against allegations that they are supporting the terrorists if they don’t support the military force fighting terrorists. The “America deserved 9/11” crowd generally believes Bin Laden did 9/11 to provoke the Americans into attacking so as to create more terrorists and weaken America. This was supported by how the GWOT kept creating more terrorists after every new counter insurgency operation.
This isn’t maybe, a totally unbiased way to see things, but the point is that the sentiment generally isn’t “Hamas is great because they kill the IDF”, the sentiment is more commonly “Screw that soldier, they’re a pawn that is playing into the hands of Hamas”.
when the "good guys" indiscriminately kill over 15000 children in the span of two months, I dunno what you expect but its certainly not "uncomprehensible"
I wonder why that is
The proportion of civilian casualties in Israel’s invasion of Gaza is not normal for the 21st century, and indicates a below-average regard for civilian life.
https://www.axios.com/2023/11/27/gaza-civilian-deaths-israel...
Jonathan Haidt explains:
Why Antisemitism Sprouted So Quickly on Campus
https://www.afterbabel.com/p/antisemitism-on-campus
The interesting thing is that the explanation largely preceded these events, he and Greg Lukianoff documented this in their 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind.