Israel, Palestine & the Levant rolling events: Oct 23 on

Coming off as "will you condemn Hamas?" at this point is not a great look.

Just checking, I don't know what to assume these days.

Same.

H.P. I am not "equating: them by talking about them at the same as part of the same dynamic and immediately after xyzzz asked me to "compare" them.

I mean it's absurd. One of you asks me something, and when I answer the other says "stop doing that!"

It feels controlling, I don't like it.

...

"they are both very bad" is literally equating the moral weight of the two! I'm assuming it's not a matter of you having a limited vocabulary!

"killing 1000 people, what do you think about that?".
"it's very bad".
"okay, how about 30x that number?".
"the same, also very bad".

???

I mean just quantitatively its terrible, then you bring in the qualitative like the fact that it is unfree people, second class, repressed people on the side to the right. The citizen vs. soldier ratios in those death tolls. The children ratios in those death tolls. The things outside of death tolls i.e. infrastructural destruction, forced mass relocation. Israel hasn't just killed 30,000 Palestinians, they've effectively destroyed the lives of 2 million people. Do you understand how infuriating it is for you to play both-sideisms when this is the reality! It is unbearable!

You want nuance from xyzzzz on how Hamas has culpability but you can't seem to express the brazen fact that Israel has/is/will-continue to do far more horrible things than Hamas in the near future! They are not both "very bad". Israels response is so insanely disproportionate that questions of Hamas' culpability code as "yeah but they deserved it"

And God damn Felicity, as if your last sentence didn't just sum up how frustrating this all is. It is insulting to bring up your personal offence and proclivities when we are talking about 13,000 murdered children. Read the room.

Can I ask you, do you have a personal connection to this conflict?

no

We all have a personal connection to this conflict because our governments are spending billions on arming one side of it.

paging Donne, John Donne

Leaving Suzy's perfectly reasonable point aside, why pull up a close family connection as a means to shut down conversation on what we are seeing and having our actions (marching, in the main) portrayed in a negative light? What's that about?

Can I ask you, do you have a personal connection to this conflict?

Appallingly, I have lifelong friends who are lefty/Dem and Jewish who have, since 7/10, been sharing horrible screeds from Douglas Murray and other professional Islamophobes, and I know pointing out the history of these UK commentators would not go down well when my friends are feeling vulnerable to antisemitic attention. The US media has limited coverage of Palestinian voices. At some point when emotions are not running as strong, it will be easier to discuss this.

I know people who have been completely disowned by their families and communities for taking a stance against the genocide (or in some cases treated like ignorant children who have been brainwashed and will eventually grow out of it). I am very fortunate to not have to make a choice like that and if I was closer to it I would probably have more sympathy for those who don't/won't/can't. Maybe this would be better suited to the effects in other countries thread unless we're talking about Israel specifically because it might come off as equating personal discomfort (which isn't nothing but seriously) with actual ongoing genocide which is something I'm seeing a lot and struggling to know how to respond to sensitively and empathetically enough without denying or excusing reality.

The question makes me wonder what "counts" as a personal connection. A few years ago I knew / was acquainted with a Palestinian man through my partner (he was her student & studio assistant). She lost touch with him during the pandemic, and I have no idea where he is now living or, if he returned to Palestine as he had intended, if he is still alive. I don't want to exaggerate the import of this—I can't say we were close; we met a few times and my partner would tell me about him from time to time—but I do think about him in this context.

I only mention that really because suzy spoke of "Palestinian voices," which are entirely absent on ILX as far as I know. That's no one's fault of course, but sometimes it's striking.

“Nothing that has been reported braces you for the true scale of the horror in Gaza.

"We’re simply not getting accurate information about the levels of destruction and brutality"

- @SarahChampionMP as MPs report back from Sinai on conditions in #Gaza https://t.co/YxMHCYPGZu

— International Development Committee (@CommonsIDC) February 21, 2024

https://i.ibb.co/PQdsN0T/GG2i-Bi4-Wk-AAqty-E.png

yes, it's worth thinking about the fact that "eliminating Hamas" also means reducing Gaza to a state of anarchy during a time of mass deprivation and desperation.

The World Food Programme suspending aid to northern Gaza is, e.g., one consequence: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/gaza-world-food-program-1.7120202

Can you tell me why you continue to bring up this point, as if humanity and solidarity and a desire for liberation aren’t international? As if empathy can only be felt when one has a connection to an event? As if it is only legitimate if it is?

I agree that empathy is a noble goal, and I asked because I was genuinely trying to understand H.P's perspective. People bring all kinds of backgrounds to this discussion, and I feel like I have a better sense of where the points of division are in the US and UK, less so in Australia (where I think H.P is from).

Minister of Social Equality & Women's Advancement, May Golan of the Likud, during a Knesset hearing about the motion to expel MK Ofer Cassif: "I am personally proud of the ruins of Gaza, and that every baby, even 80 years from now, will tell their grandchildren what the Jews did" pic.twitter.com/dhwzqSS0mT

— B.M. (@ireallyhateyou) February 21, 2024

You will die, your children will die, your grandchildren will die - there won't be a Palestinian state, there won't be."
MK Hanoch Milbitsky (Likud) to MK Ayman Odeh: "There will never be a Palestinian state"

pic.twitter.com/QfZupYlapl

— Avner Gvaryahu (@AGvaryahu) February 21, 2024

Golan says “If I am racist for wanting to defend my country and for wanting to protect my basic rights and security, then I’m a proud racist”

These are our friends and allies I'm told.

Look Tom D., your sarcasm sounds like a defense of Hamas.

they didn't quite have the votes to kick Cassif out

the only MK I'd vote for

Very good

מר ביטחון, מר כלכלה, מר מלחמה - חלאס, שחרר אותנו מעול ההישרדות הפוליטית שלך. pic.twitter.com/OZ99hHjpGa

— איימן עודה أيمن عودة Ayman Odeh (@AyOdeh) February 22, 2024

Well I never...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/22/us-intelligence-unrwa-hamas

BREAKING: Next week #Israel is to approve #Jerusalem periphery #E1 South and East spatial plans, which would allow for the addition of 3,401 settlement housing units and the transfer - in grave breach of international law - of an additional 14,500 settlers to the heart of the… pic.twitter.com/rTJK551hd4

— Itay Epshtain (@EpshtainItay) February 24, 2024

Why does Hamas keep forcing Israel to do this?

On the demo today it was pointed out that if the Israelis were killing children in the UK at the rate they are in Gaza we'd be at around 300 000 dead now.

Sorry to ask but how does that work? If the rate is the same why would the number be different?

I mean the number of children murdered is already unthinkable without this kind of thought experiment but I’m confused

Hundreds of aid trucks being denied entrance to Gaza, and sometimes being bombed once they get in. People are eating their horses and stewing leaves for nutrition. But sure, it's the UNRWA schools that teach young Palestinian children to hate Israel.

Sorry to ask but how does that work? If the rate is the same why would the number be different?

uh, because uk has 30 x the population.

whatever, it is the highest rate of civilian murder of a population of any post ww2 conflict.

Oh ok, that’s proportion rather than rate I think. Apply that to say china, or earth, the number would be even higher

whatever, it is the highest rate of civilian murder of a population of any post ww2 conflict.

Yeah that’s the point and worth making again & again, just seemed like a weird way to make it

ok. my bad on the arithmetic terminology.

It’s not a terminology issue really I just don’t think “if we multiply this number by 30 it’s 30 times bigger!” was necessarily a good way to communicate the actual horror of the number’s reality: it causes confusion in dopes like me and leaves room for bad actors to nitpick the finer points of massacring kids

yeah that is meaningless

maybe to you but it's not meaningless at all; it was absolutely not meaningless to the people protesting today. it had a visceral reaction. it really got across to a very large number of people there the scale of the atrocity.

nitpick away though, why don't you.

whatever, it is the highest rate of civilian murder of a population of any post ww2 conflict.

This is wrong right? Like if we're talking conflicts then the US has killed more Iraqi civilians with their post 9/11 affairs than what Israel has done so far? Then there's Afghanistan + surrounding countries to count as well...

I'm not posting this as any defense, there's no "better" amount of civilians to kill in a conflict; just don't want false facts to "leave room for bad actors". If I'm wrong please correct me

Like wins says, I think this muddled fact is rate(proportion) rather than rate(over time).

ah okay makes sense, skimmed over "rate", my bad

“If Gaza had 100 times the population there would be over a million dead in this conflict”

I’m sure getting across the scale of the atrocity by making up an imaginary atrocity of a completely different scale got a lot of ppl fired up in the moment, but written down on a forum it’s bad not good because it doesn’t really bear scrutiny

Cambodia is probably the highest, but I think comparing and contrasting these things is difficult

I think it illustrates to people the relative proportionate size of population loss. What percentage of the people of a place are killed is a meaningful metric for understanding scale.

I'm not sure why you think that it doesn't stand up to scrutiny given that translation to matching scales is generally how comparisons of proportion work (e.g. percentage). One wouldn't say that 33% of 60 is a meaningless figure as it illustrates proportion.

Given the population of the UK is so large in comparison I can see why scaling this up would be a meaningful illustration of what the proportionate impact to another population would be. People derive their sense of scale from their own context. We know from experience that people often find the scale of things like number of deaths and casualties difficult to keep from becoming abstract in their cognition. Ways of illustrating scale can be helpful in order to understand the enormity of the loss. In this case proportion seems an important metric to understand the impact of this amount of death to a people and their networks of community and memory. This may require some translation.

I've heard Israeli spokespeople using it constantly with regard to the death toll on October 7.

Ico otm. I work in a school. I've told friends that Israel has murdered the equivalent of my school's worth of children every 3 days for 4 months straight. Giving a real world comparsion has allowed myself and others to get a better sense of how totally evil this all is

Right, you’re using a familiar context but also comparing like with like, the numbers are the same. Using your school as a comparison point is better than starting with the population of the United States, keeping the percentage the same & then saying “look how high that number is”; that would technically be correct but it’s rhetorical inflation, it’s misleading & confusing imo. Even when comparing proportions you should start with like numbers otherwise you’re trying to convey scale by *literally changing the scale* to be much bigger & there are loads of ways to do so in a uk context & be immediately understood (have seen Birmingham used as a comparison point eg)

Real numbers are enough. How could they not be?

There's better things to stride the high-horse on re: this war wins. Proportions, rates, percentages, all exist and are useful for communication. No need to be indignant at their use if they are used with clarity. And where it's not clear, still no need to get indignant, you can just ask for clarification and all is right again.

xps myself: "others" wasn't rhetorical, I mean real world people I talk to about this, not some wanky royal "them".

Point taken, not dying on this hill