but still there’s a lost nuance in this article that Israel is only addressing the Palestinian leaders (Hamas), not the Palestinian population as a whole.
Sorry, but that is pure and utter bullshit and shows you trying to justify Israels actions in a way not even Israels own government does.
That’s a very huge distinction, since jews in the Holocaust were just regular citizens in a country, without a murderous leadership. Palestinians are different in that regard - they have a terrorist organization running their territory, and no one but Israel can/will do anything about that. No one is considering how good Gazans could’ve lived if their leaders weren’t terrorists.
If Israel was actually only narrowly targeting Hamas, then that’d be great. Polls shows most people in Gaza would prefer the PA control Gaza too. I’ve posted links and images of those polls several times. But the idea that is all Israel is doing is pure fiction.
And nobody can fight a terrorist organization without civilian casualties.
Nobody is asking for that. People are asking for them to not engage in genocide. People have also been asking them - for many decades - to stop engaging in Apartheid and other brutally war crimes and human rights violations. Hamas only exists in the first place because of Israeli oppression and because Israeli encouraged opposition to Fatah. The violence of Hamas against both Israel and the Palestinian population is also part of Israels responsibility. They brought it on, and they therefore has a special responsibility to not worsen the situation even further through even more harm against civilians who have done nothing wrong and who have all been victims of Israel their whole lives, and a large proportion have also been victims of Hamas their whole lives.
Calling it a genocide is in my eyes dishonest to actual genocides where innocent people are being called animals and pillaged and slaughtered.
Denying the evidence for what Israel is engaging in is vile and dishonest against the Palestinian population.
Palestinians are poor people, but there’s definitely not only one aggressor against them.
That is true. But they’re not helped by apologists for the brutally oppressive Israeli apartheid regime.
Terrorising the civilian population makes them no better than Hamas, and that you seek to justify their brutality is quite telling.
Very few brutal oppressors officially target civilians. The notion that it’s not official policy is the excuse of apologists for brutally oppressive regimes everywhere.
Of course. Nobody is going to carry out an attack and go “of course we intended to murder innocent people, and knowingly committed war crimes”, so that will always be the story. And given that Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on the planet, you can randomly and indiscriminately attack and then retroactively find some excuse. That they keep ending up with dead civilians shows
This is only hard to people who haven’t bothered looking, and who are wildly unaware of the characteristics of apartheid.
This was exactly the point of the use of Bantustans in South Africa too: To try to write off responsibility by pretending that they had “independence”, even though South African controlled essential aspects such as borders.
Ever heard of the “states” Transkei? KwaZulu? Ciskei? There were many more. They were “states” created in a way that allowed the South African regime to try to pretend that the suffering and oppression they forced on the population was not their fault, because they were nominally “independent”. Many of the leaderships of these bantustans took on the role willingly - a means for personal power - some took up with some level of protest. E.g. Buthelezi, who led Inkatha and “ruled” KwaZulu refused to accept the pretend independence offered in part because the territory was inherently unviable.
What all of these “countries” had in common was that their bordered were unilaterally dictated by South Africa, and their level of territorial control was unilaterally dictated by South Africa, and so on, just like Israel has dictated the level of territorial control of the West Bank and Gaza and hollowed out whichever pieces they wanted. Many of the bantustans were used as excuses for “resettling” populations in supposed “homelands” and denying claims to other land the same way Palestinians have been systematically pushed into smaller and smaller areas and given some notional control over what is left.
KwaZulu was a “homeland” for the Zulu people. Ciskei and Transkei were “homelands” for the Xhosa people.
Ovamboland was a “homeland” for the Ovambo people in Namibia, so not even part of South Africa. Damaraland for the Damara people, also in Namibia. Hereroland for the Hereros, also in Namibia.
Like Israel, South Africa also occupied and controlled territories outside their own national boundaries where they, like Israel, unilaterally decided on borders for territories allowed to self govern.
So even if on were to accept your notion that the fact Palestinians and Israelis agree that they are not Israeli, there were still numerous Bantustans in the same situation: Populations that did not consider themselves part of either the same people or the same nation as South Africa, and which were still a core part of the bantustan system.
That you use this as an excuse for dismissing the accusation of Apartheid makes it clear you don’t understand what Apartheid was. Because Apartheid was far more varied than “just” the headline racism and the most in-your-face segregation.
I suggest this article. It’s old, but it’s good particularly because one of the main people mentioned in the article, Arthur Goldreich, was a hero of the Apartheid struggle, a Jewish South African who helped hide Mandela. He was also a fighter in Palmach in the 1940’s, fighting to make Israel a reality. After fleeing South African prison, he settled in Israel again in the 1960’s. I’ll quote a few paragraphs:
These are the words of someone who lived decades in South Africa under Apartheid, and then decades in Israel under Apartheid, and who fought against South Africa, and who fought for Israel. This was 2006. Things have gotten far worse since then.
This is actually worse. If you acknowledge what they’re doing (despite your attempts to whitewash it above), then you’re giving oppressors engaged in gross human rights abuses a break while not giving the oppressed civilian population who are also opposed to Hamas and of whom the vast majority are innocent a break.
“Your criticism forced us to align with far-right extremist mass murderers” is never a valid argument. Everyone should stick their noses in when a country keeps electing governments that commits crimes against humanity on a regular basis, just like people eventually did against South African apartheid. If “woke” now means “has basic human decency”, then anyone who isn’t woke is scum.
People used your argument to try to shield the South African apartheid regime against criticism too, and it was just as nasty apologism then as it is now.
Anyone who believes supporting Palestinians has been “the easy way” is either a child or have not paid attention to the political climate for support for Palestinians over a period of many decades. It’s ahistorical and a nasty distortion.