We’re a group of activists in a Western country where most have been brought up with either “Israel = good, Hamas = bad” or “It’s a sad, but unsolvable conflict between two equal sides”. The media heavily skewed to the Israeli perspective, and our politicians want to condemn protests in support of Palestinians. Therefore, unless you purposefully seek out information on what’s going on in Palestine, you won’t really encounter information about the occupation, the apartheid or the human rights violations. There are a lot of gaps in people’s information and understanding of the situation.
Atm there’s a lot of dehumanization, a lot of “Well, what can you do? Hamas keeps attacking Israel, what are they supposed to do?”. I think the Israel=Good is deep-rooted in a lot of westerners. I know it was in me.
We’ve asked ourselves and each other what finally broke through our previous perception, so we could see the inequality and realize that what’s happening is not right
One mentioned seeing a journalist in the back of an ambulance being handed a one-year-old that had passed
One mentioned seeing a video of a caring father saying goodbye to his little girl, kissing her eyes before she was wrapped in the materiale they wrap their dead. The father clearly in denial, smiling and wishing for her to wake up.
A big one for me was being told that it’s not an equal fight. It’s not two equally strong countries. It’s one country with a huge military, and another with barely any. Another was hearing about the human rights violations that’s been going on for decades - the fabricated water shortage, the children in Israeli jails.
I believe these are the moments we need to collect and present to those who are still wary on where they stand.
What broke through to you?
I had the opposite journey. I used to be more sympathetic to Palestinian side until this war started. Most people and media around me are pro-Palestinian.
But it’s not the whole story. This is a situation where no side is clean or innocent. So many Palestinians support Hamas that it’s hard to have sympathy. Yes, they lived under occupation for decades, but learned all the wrong lessons - how to be just as bad as Israel.
The fight is more evenly matched than you suggest. Israel may be winning militarily, but Hamas has the better media presence, and is winning hearts and minds of people around the world. Every dead Palestinian benefits Hamas more than it benefits Israel. They know it, and use it to the fullest extent.
They’re officially declared a terrorist organisation in many places, and nobody argues with it (not unreasonably, but nobody’s going after the settlers for the same). They might be pulling forward a bit right now, but historically the Israeli lobby has been no joke in the West.
Plenty of people argue that Hamas is not a terrorist organization.
Israel is relatively popular in the US, but younger Americans and many circles within academia are rabid antizionists, as I think you’ve seen. Many are calling to “globalize the intifada.”
Hamas has not succeeded in making the average westerner think terrorism is good, but they have succeeded in normalizing terrorism, making more people think that “terrorism” is an Islamophobic term, making more people think that Israel does not have the right to exist, and emboldening antisemites on the right and left. Younger generations are more and more aggressively antizionist as time goes on.
Settler expansion is a problem that’s more complicated and less exciting to people than the war. It makes sense that antizionists want us to focus on the war and just use settler expansion for color.
This study from the GWU Program on Extremism is an important read on the topic of Hamas’s presence in the US over time.
Yeah, I can cherry-pick morons off the internet too. That was an approximate “nobody”, there are of course some voices at the fringe. I mostly agree with OP, I just thought that one bit was an odd take.
As for the rest, terrorist is a meaningless word for non-state actors we don’t like. Hamas is not bad because they’re terrorists, but because they’re theocrats that want to eliminate the neighboring ethnic group. They are not alone.
Dude literally said that everyone he knows was siding with the genocided people side so he choose to side with one doing the genocide ,bruh…
That’s like saying Vietnamese deserves what US troops dis to them because they supported their freedom fighters.
My people too sided with their freedom fighters and were massacred for it. It was the same with every colonized country. You’re literally saying they don’t have the right to fight for their freedom.
So Isreal which is funded with billions and billions from USA who also literally bully anyone from trying to stop the genocide being committed by ‘Israel’, an apartheid state whose crimes are so horrible that despite the immense amount of propaganda they pour everywhere, peoples around the world still sided with palestinians, the fight as you call it or more precisely the one sided genocide is even. Okey.
Hamas is a direct result of Israel’s actions. If Israel hadn’t carried out an apartheid for the last 70 years Hamas wouldn’t even exist. It doesn’t help that Israel directly funded Hamas in favor of secular liberation groups.
Americans do not want to think about the prospect of Hamas being a response rather than an an origin stimulus-- because it reminds them of what they had to do to prevent response in this country, and what they may have to attempt again in coming days
Hamas has the better media presence? While Israel is doing a bad job I don’t think that’s the case at all. Hamas isn’t winning heats, but Palestinians are.
Hamas’s goal is not to make you think they’re the good guys, their goal is to eradicate Israel and the Jewish people, and/or to die trying. They’ve been turning sentiment in their favor.
Don’t try to make sense. They wanna hear “choose-your-side” opinions