So...Hamas basically decided to attack Israel, and Israel is now attacking Hamas. Lovely.
You know, I try to stay out of this conflict. Why? because it's SO DUMB in my opinion. Like...both sides have valid points at this point, but both are morally messed up.
You has Israel, who thinks they literally have a god given right to that land, who after WWII were given the land by colonials powers because they were too racist to accept Jews in their own home countries, and to avoid another holocaust, believed Jews deserved their own country to live in.
This displaced the palestinians, who had been living there over the past how many hundred years, who were rightfully pissed off that their land was stolen.
And generally speaking the western powers support Israel because they're a fairly western democracy with comparable values to the US, although they also seem to behave like an ethno state in my own study of their political structure.
And then you have the palestinians. They might have a valid point in that their homeland was just stolen from them, but given generations have passed since this happened, given most of the original aggressors are either very old or not still alive, and given that the destruction of the state of israel at this point would be insane and trigger just as great of a humanitarian crisis that its original founding would have, we kinda have the descendants just fighting over the land, both having valid arguments, both arguably wanting to live in peace, but both in warfare against each other.
And yeah, that's why I kinda sit this one out. Palestine might have legitimate arguments, but Hamas is...at this point, a terrorist organization that just wants what they want and doesn't give a F how unrealistic it is and how that ship sailed, so they're launching attacks.
And Israel...well...from their perspective, they're fighting for their right to exist. They know that they're surrounded by hostile arab powers who want them gone and side with the palestinians, so they act hyper aggressive in their own way against all enemies, and generally, they end up electing the most far right hardliner neocon types possible like Netanyahu because their politics dictate that need that in order to stay safe.
Honestly, at this point, the solution to the crisis would arguably be either a two state solution or a solution in which the two sides disarm a bit, come to the center, and start seeing eye to each with each other, but instead Hamas goes full terrorist mode, and Israel goes full neocon mode.
And yeah. This is a no win situation. And given my "enlightened self interest" perspective, I generally try to stay out of the conflict but given this is serious and might be the triggering of a major war, eh...giving my opinion.
While both sides need to grow the F up and stop committing atrocities against each other, eh...if I had to take a side, I'd do Israel primarily for geopolitical reasons. They're already culturally closer to the US, there's already a relationship there. Hamas isn't gonna play ball with us at all, why would we support them? There's literally no strategic relationship in doing so, and yeah.
You can argue morally that Palestine is in the right, given the colonial powers basically creating this crisis to begin with by establishing israel, and you might be right, BUT, for me, the proper time to solve this would've been in 1948. Not now, 75 years later. Not after people have lived their entire lives in Israel and that it's all they know. As far as im concerned, Israel has just as much right to exist by this point as everyone else, and I have no interest in dissolving the one middle eastern democracy that has values similar to the US just to we can give it back to the people who were in charge of it 75+ years ago.
I know, I know, it was evil, it was wrong. SO were a lot of things. The entire history of humanity and statism is just one big clusterfudge of conquest and death. Arguably we should give back the americas to the native americans we genocided. Is that gonna happen? No. Do some far leftists argue for it to happen? Sure. But they're not living in reality.
I mean, honestly, I dont think any state exists justly if we wanna get down to morality. All of them are violent. All have conquered others. All have oppressed others. Killed others. The real question is, how can we make this right NOW?! America, for example, does try to integrate the ethnic minorities it oppressed into its country better. We try to give them rights. Right past wrongs to an extent. yes, some leftists want us to go further and push the envelope a bit, but still. We've made a lot of progress.
other countries, like Israel, need to make similar strides in improving relations with other people who live in the region. And those people, the palestinians, need to be willing to accept that. Because to my knowledge any time I see this discussion come up Israelis have offered citizenship and the like to Palestinians before and a lot of them just..reject it. because they want it their way, period. So they have chosen death, as saruman would say.
Which brings me to how I feel about this. Hamas struck first. They're the aggressor here. If this devolves into a full scale war, I blame them. And what happens next is...all on them. Generally, given my neutral stance, and given how my interest is in keeping the peace, regardless of what that looks like, and not wanting this to devolve into a full scale hot war, yeah, if forced to choose a side, I'm going to choose Israel here. Maybe dont commit organized military attacks against another power if you didn't want it to end this way. And yeah, that's where I stand.
A relevant video on the history of the region that sums up my perspective on the issue and the futility of blaming any one side for the state of things, outside of who is currently causing the most problems:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tIdCsMufIY
I'm just trying to avoid that end nuclear stage shown there.
Also, note how there was thousands of years of warfare there before the palestinians settled there. Yeah. They're not the "rightful owners" from some moral standpoint either. And the jews were there first. And yes, as we know from the book of joshua, they violently took it over too. no one is the good guy here. No one. Hence why I think the moral debate is irrelevant and I'm more focused on keeping the region stable NOW.You can fight for whatever social justice in your home country you want, go for it. Palestinians deserve rights too, blah blah blah. But as long as hardliners exist, we get crap like this, and it just further entrenches those hardliners.
No comments:
Post a Comment