I didn’t want to direct this question to Americans specifically because, at this point, other countries have shown support to Israel in one or the other way. If my country was financing this, I would be taking the streets. Shit, I’m right now in the hospital but all I can think about is protesting anyway just to feel I did something to stop this madness.
Are you doing something about this? Are you feeling unsettled? How do you feel about all this mess?
EDIT: So, buying Chinese stuff takes the USS Gerald Ford to Gaza’s coast. Also, TIL that that chocolate my cousin gave me when she was 20 and I was 5, (delicious stuff!) made me a slavist-ish. The fact remains, this genocide is being paid and supported by taxpayers money; of course, I was hoping that most of us didn’t pay taxes wishing for this. Thank you all for your responses, some of them were hard to swallow.
I feel that taking one side over the other without allowing for any nuance in that complicated clusterfuck over there is disingenuous. I feel very sorry for all civilians caught between the many murderous assholes in that region, but I can’t fully support one group while completely condemning the other. Acting like it’s a black and white issue is so very wrong and not helpful.
But our government did pick a side. So what is our obligation, then?
Let your delegate know that you wish for more nuance, that instead of supporting the state of Israel, that it’d be better to side with the civilians on all sides who are dying in this messed up conflict.
Well put and i completely agree!
Which side is committing genocide? That’s the side to oppose in any fight.
My country has been voting to condemn Israel’s treatment of Palestine in the UN until 2022 but they will probably vote the same now. As far as I know my country doesn’t support Israel monetarily either so I’m pretty happy.
This is the way
In the US, speaking the truth about the Israel-Palestine ::cough::Palestinian genocide::cough:: war will get you cancelled by AIPAC astroturfers and useful idiots who just cancel who they’re told to cancel. That’s how they (the AIPAC, the military industrial complex, and AIPAC-run film industry…if you don’t believe me, why was Harvey Weinstein so friendly with ex-Mossad agents that he was able to use them against his opponents?) manufacture consent among normal people these days.
Additionally, 35 US states have anti-bds laws on the books punishing US citizens that choose not to buy products from Israel. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws In many of those US states you can be fired from government jobs for refusing to buy Israeli products in your own personal life.
Leading question.
Edit: For an actual “answer”, some people are in fact taking it to the streets. For your favorite country you can search for it and if you don’t want to do that here’s an article for the US. While you may argue that we should’ve expected this, at the time of financing all we know is that there was a first strike and people were angry. Now it’s different, at least in my local circle.
Either way, this should not be a question for asklemmy. It should be in the politics community or something.
Loaded question.
rhetorical “question”
I desire the end of America and indeed all capitalist states, ideally before they slide even further into fascism in the near future. Death to the Israeli state, and death to any states that support it.
My country burns money, resources and human lives to enforce its hegemony on the other side of the planet while I only have health insurance through my crappy job and the infrastructure is crumbling everywhere. How do you think I feel?
Not too hot, I guess. Thanks for taking the time.
No problemo
Many are just trying to make the best out of what we have and it often feels like we have such little impact on these things happening across the country, let along in other parts of the world. The world population approaches 8 billion. Our impact is often meaningful in some way, but incredibly limited overall.
How can someone truly help with something across the world, like Ukraine/Russia and now Israel/Gaza, when conflict is constant and many also have to simply survive, in the face of entities that are capable of spending trillions of dollars.
If my country was financing this, I would be taking the streets.
If I took to the streets over this, I would make protestors look bad because I have no experience, no social skills, no support network, and I’m a terrible rhetorician, especially when I am angry. Additionally, my family is fast to call the cops and has promised me that they would cooperate with the police if I ever got on their radar, so my presence would be a security culture issue.
Are you doing something about this?
Well, I have chosen not to work for companies that participate in such genocides, which is not a completely vacuous statement because they have sent me recruitment emails to design their fucking missiles! But frankly, I am fighting my own battles right now. I am desperately trying to find work. I am constantly fighting insurers to pay for the few times I ever muster up the courage to use my insurance. I am fighting my own goddamn family who will throw me to the fucking wolves if I can’t afford the rent. I am fighting the urge to walk off into the woods and fucking die of embarrassment at having accomplished so little at my age.
So no, I’m not really doing anything. I’ll cop to that. I’ve copped to worse, and at least for now I can live with being a hypocrite. Sorry if that’s unsatisfactory.
Are you feeling unsettled? How do you feel about all this mess?
I fucking HATE America, I fucking HATE world governments, and this just adds to the list of reasons why. Unsettled doesn’t even begin to cover it.
It’s giving me Iraq war vibes, except my friends aren’t getting involved. The escalation doesn’t make sense at all unless you consider Netanyahu needed to distract from his aspirations of becoming a dictator.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Keep posting of that’s all you can do right now.Great quote you made me think of.
The truth hurts, but silence kills. -Mark Twain
I don’t mean to derail the conversation, but it pains me to say that Europeans have been financing the ethnic cleansing of Artsakh by buying Azerbaijani oil with almost no repercussion.
Americans are the biggest donors, but Britain, Germany, and to a lesser extent Australia and Canada, and a handful of non-German EU countries also give Israel a lot of money.
Since you probably buy stuff made in China like everyone else, you tell us.
What does China have to do with anything?
“it’s not whataboutism when I do it”
China meets the manufacturing needs for most of the world, it’s economically not realistic to boycott them
That said, we still should boycott them, at least in principle.
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We paid them slave wages to make things for us but they didn’t play fair and learned how to make things for themselves
It’s really not that hard to boycott China, people just don’t do it because they’re selfish and would rather support an authoritarian regime than stand for what’s right
I haven’t eaten any cooked hot food since the HK protests because every appliance is made or parts majority made in China
I will eat sliced bread and beans the rest of my life to own the Chinese
Psh. You posuer. I’ve converted my life savings to yuan notes and am now keeping them under the bed to reduce the circulation of cash in the Chinese economy.
Beans is one thing, but cold beans??? That’s a step too far, I now uncritically support Xi.
The principle of being racist scumbags?
In general I agree with you, but reality is also more nuanced. A blanket boycott can often harm the people you want to protect. A common question in the debate about Palestine and Uyghurstan and boycotts is what to do about companies that give equal opportunities to people from the targeted communities - i.e. companies that give jobs in the same terms to both Israelis and Palestinians or the Han Chinese and Uyghur people.
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Tell me you haven’t read any serious report about the situation in Uyghurstan (can we please drop the chinese “new territory” colonial designation? I don’t think it helps anyone, including the Chinese position) without telling me you never read a serious report about the situation in Uyghurstan. There are several identified cases of the use of slave labor, but there are also lots of companies that had credible audits to show that at least on a superficial level they treat everyone fairly - and a huge chunk of places where the situation is as clear as mud.
Personally, I would choose to focus on things I ostensibly have some amount of control over. As an American, I have no effect whatsoever on Chinese laws or policy. However, I allegedly have power over my own country’s laws and policies, so I choose to expend my energy trying to end slave labor in America, which is legal if the person has been convicted of a crime.
Why would I spend the precious little free time and energy I have (between making enough money to pay rent and eat food) on something out of my control?
If you read the thread, or at least my responses, you would probably made a more conscious effort to answer my question.
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Thank you for saying it better than I could have.
How did you feel insulted? I’m not saying any citizen is guilty of anything. I do not think so. But this is happening with their money. All I’m saying is representatives of these countries should know and follow whatever the people they govern thinks they should do. If you feel insulted, maybe, just maybe that’s on you.
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I just love all these creative ways people find to say that they’re imbeciles without saying it explicitly.
Defeated and hopeless mostly. Almost the same as I felt funding the war in the middle east after looking at the casualties and reading testimonies from US soldiers. It’s long weighed heavily on me that half of every dollar I’m required to pay to the government is used to kill people who have nothing to do with me, especially as someone whose worked since he was 16. The war in the middle east was met with the largest protests in US history at the time and nothing changed. We then elected a democrat who was given a noble peace prize, he kept the war going and killed many civilians with drone strikes. I don’t even own a house and the rate at which my savings are stacking up, there’s not much I can even afford to do. Welcome to the machine.
It’s never just been the US - Israel doesn’t just have a whole bunch of enablers… said enablers also back the very idea of a modern-day Israel.
France, the UK, Germany, Australia, Apartheid-era South Africa all played their part in helping with all this - I guess the fact that it’s all countries with histories that are deeply entwined with white supremacism, antisemitism and colonialism is purely coincidence, eh?
Did I read this correctly? You just tried to say that Israel’s supporters are antisemitic? How’d you connect those two dots?
You just tried to say that Israel’s supporters are antisemitic?
No. I never tried to say it.
I just plain said it - the countries that enable Israel is as antisemitic and white supremacist as they have always been. They’ve been hiding it since WW2 - but, as the resurgence of mask-off far-right ideology in the US and Europe proves, it’s still the same old west.
The west’s support for Israel has always been antisemitic - dumping European Jewish people in Palestine was literally one the Nazi’s potential solutions to the “Jewish Question”. It’s no secret - just mundane history that westerners doesn’t like talking about.
Christian Zionism predates Jewish Zionism - the whole reason these white supremacist and antisemitic societies fantasized about a modern-day “Israel” was simply because they did not believe Jewish people belonged in their precious “white” societies.
You don’t have to think about it for very long to see it for yourself - who were the people that made it so difficult for Jewish people to “belong” in western societies? If the US was so friendly and welcoming to Jewish people as the US wants to pretend it is (prominent Jewish people like Steven Spielberg and Noam Chomsky will happily tell you about US-style antisemitism), why would Jewish people need a “homeland” in the middle-east?
No. I never tried to say it. I just plain said it…
I’d like to point out to folks that whatever your stance on the issue may be, this statement (taken by itself) is pretty funny.
Please excuse the interruption and continue.
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Either you replied to the wrong comment, or I’m misunderstanding yours
Ah so it would seem. Sorry.
No worries. These things happen.
I don’t like it one bit.
The government sees it as a strategic need to have a strong ally in the region. That view will not change, at least not anytime soon. The Pentagon considers it a national security issue, which puts it beyond politics. Unfortunately, I have to live with that.
