IrateAnteater

Honestly, when it comes to these types of conflict, I'm less concerned about the overall morality of the movement, and more concerned with the the individual actions, and even then, I'm generally more concerned with effectiveness, rather than whether or not it was "right". That question tends to get very blurry as time goes on. Look at historical revolutions against monarchies like the French or Russian revolutions. Does the initial "righteousness" of the movement cover for actions that came later?

I'm a believer in being aware of and accepting the consequences of the choices you make, both good and bad. If there are bad consequences to your actions, you have to own the fact that you've either deemed those consequences as acceptable, or else you were unaware that it would happen. Everything is a choice, and all choices have consequences. Judging the right and wrong of it is a quagmire I try not to delve into. I think it's much more useful to keep sight of what choices led to what consequences, and learn from that.

And this is the learning that I'm saying has to happen. Did that kidnapping work? Are their families safe? Did it effect nothing? Or, did it make things worse? What were the consequences of that action? That's what I'm saying we have to not gloss over by making Hamas out to be innocent angels, and Israel the cartoon villains. In 20 years, if some freedom fighter on another continent looks to this conflict for inspiration, should they take away that everything Hamas ever did was a good idea, by the simple virtue that Israel was worse? Or should they actually learn?

Do I kidnap the home invader's kid in response? The world is not as simplistic as you'd apparently like it to be.

Sometimes there are no good choices, but that doesn't absolve you of the consequences of that choice you had to make.

The world isn't made up of good guys and bad guys. Hamas doesn't get a pass on their actions just because Israel committed worse. And my purpose in pointing this out is not to absolve Israel of their actions, it's to ensure people remain aware of what actions are likely to result in what consequences.

My hope is that in the future, when some other fight for freedom starts up somewhere else, the people there can learn from what happened in Gaza. Learn which actions worked, which ones were futile, and which ones actively made things worse. That learning gets real muddy if we keep glossing the whole thing over with "Everything is only Israel's fault".

I'm old enough to remember the first Iraq. I'm also aware enough of history to understand that when you hold a group up as the innocent victims, when they were anything but, you create an environment where other groups emulate them down the road.

The Israeli government holds the lions share of the blame for the Gaza genocide, after all, they are the one's doing it. But if we want to learn from this, and learn from what led up to it to hopefully short circuit things before they get this far in the future, we must acknowledge Hamas role.

Hamas may be fighting for the Palestinian people, but how you fight can have a major effect on how your enemies react, and also can have a major effect on soft support from third parties. Things like fighting out of civilian areas, and fighting without uniforms, etc, were made war crimes in the past specifically because of situations like this; it ends up getting civilians caught in the crossfire at best, and targeted at worst.

This isn't a left/right position, this is just observations on what has happened globally every time an assymetrical war has been fought over the last 30 years.

Realistically, everyone holds some blame here. If the UN had some balls (and if the US and USSR could have pulled their heads out of their collective asses back in the seventies) there would have been peacekeepers and a two state solution after the first war. Probably should have made Jerusalem a city state like the Vatican, just to stop everyone fighting for control of that too.

Hamas doesn't equal the entirety of the Palestinian population in the same way that the Israeli government/military doesn't equal the entire Israeli population. Why is that so hard for you .ml tankies to separate? There's a reason why I specifically make sure to phrase the discussion as "Hamas's actions" not "the Palestinians' actions"

Man, I feel like a lot of the science headline writers forget that dark matter and dark energy were only ever placeholders. This doesn't "rattle our view of the universe"; we already knew that our view was incomplete, hence the need for placeholders in the first place.

Nobody is vilifying someone because they have different opinions on the importance of reading Shakespeare in high-school, or if they think, big centralised public libraries are a better option to lots of smaller public libraries.

No, but they are dumping people into that category in their mind, and then making all kinds of assumptions and conclusions about that person based off the one false assumption. And then because it's the internet, the name calling starts and all constructive conversation ends.

Just look at this thread. I started it with "the current American political discourse sucks" and no-one commenting was able to take that statement at face value. Everyone replied with assumptions on what my stance was on issues I didn't mention. It's that exact reflex that I have a problem with. Essentially, I agree with the message, but I disagree with the delivery method.

Being called an extremist is not really the thing I'm taking issue with. The right wing has been doing that for decades, screeching "communist!" at the most ridiculous things. And depending on which particular ideals you subscribe to, being such an "extremist" is probably a good thing.

The issue I have is that instead of calling out that shitty behavior, the left has started emulating and expanding on it. In addition to calling everyone "fascist", they've started attacking the entire concept of being a centrist (and I mean actual centrist here, not just right wingers arguing in bad faith). People aren't born believing in one socioeconomic system or another, it's learned. Generally, everyone is going to start off somewhere in the center, as they become politically aware. If the only voices they ever hear is two sides screeching names at eachother, you wind up with a disengaged and disinterested voting population, which will only help the fascists.