It isn't a can of worms. The person you know doesn't care that 30,000+ Palestinians have been killed, and advertised it for their friend group to see. What else is there to know except that the person you know is not a good person?
― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Thursday, 21 March 2024 18:13 (six months ago) link
yeah i've never thought this was a particularly good person. it was more interesting to see it as an example of grassroots propaganda of the type i've seen a lot of on social media and wondered if that group was part of a larger effort to engage in it, i don't know anything about it.
― omar little, Thursday, 21 March 2024 18:19 (six months ago) link
It sounds like a Birthright tour, but for adults.
― steely flan (suzy), Thursday, 21 March 2024 18:22 (six months ago) link
https://www.schusterman.org/reality
― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Thursday, 21 March 2024 18:33 (six months ago) link
The Schusterman family were among the founders of Birthright Israel, and made their fortune investing in petroleum products. Basically, and ultra-Zionist Koch Brothers
― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Thursday, 21 March 2024 18:36 (six months ago) link
When she is not working, she can be found cooking Israeli recipes (and destroying a few kitchens in the process)
― President Keyes, Thursday, 21 March 2024 18:39 (six months ago) link
the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philantropies is behind the REALITY trips, which actually have just been cut going forward (https://www.yahoo.com/news/schusterman-cuts-reality-trips-leadership-124752133.html). they are also co-founders of Birthright Israel.
The trips themselves are geared at people with platforms and influence, mostly, to help use their experience to enact social change. One trip indicates "Through this journey, you will go beyond the headlines and sound bites to explore the richness and complexity of Israel firsthand while strengthening your abilities to engage in challenging conversations across lines of difference."
the program seems geared at countering some of the conversations and what they feel are misconceptions about Israel - I don't think their specific goal is to influence discourse regarding past and current conflicts, but I would guess the type of people they approve to go on these REALITY tours are probably people with viewpoints similar to the person you know. particularly since the Israel Institute, which they founded, has been accused of influencing institutions to minimize criticism of Israel.
so perhaps not their overall goal, but "hey, people are shitting on Bibi/Israel, would you like to see the real Israel instead of the lies the mainstream media shares" is probably a unstated secondary goal
― CEO Greedwagon (Neanderthal), Thursday, 21 March 2024 18:40 (six months ago) link
xxxposts lol....looks like we all posted fragments of the same
― CEO Greedwagon (Neanderthal), Thursday, 21 March 2024 18:41 (six months ago) link
They infect people with hasbara talking points and then send them back to manufacture consent through their platforms and networks
― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Thursday, 21 March 2024 18:43 (six months ago) link
Sorry not sorry to be harsh, not in the mood to entertain niceties about what the real goals of these organizations are.
― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Thursday, 21 March 2024 18:44 (six months ago) link
don't think the goals I stated are very nice goals! i'm essentially in agreement with you
― CEO Greedwagon (Neanderthal), Thursday, 21 March 2024 18:48 (six months ago) link
btw the can of worms comment was simply me stating i didn't comment on that post on IG, i didn't want to open a can of worms in terms of getting into it.
― omar little, Thursday, 21 March 2024 18:49 (six months ago) link
understandable, sorry to misinterpret
― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Thursday, 21 March 2024 18:51 (six months ago) link
one of the biggest anti-Trump "take back our country from fascism" guys I knew, I had to eventually delete because his response to the Palestinian deaths, unsolicited, was "don't lots of people always die in war?"
in war, both sides have usually consented to fight and have arms to fight with, but idk ymmv rando asshole
― CEO Greedwagon (Neanderthal), Thursday, 21 March 2024 18:52 (six months ago) link
no prob table, it's a pretty volatile topic and you ain't gotta worry about what you say to me, you've got exceptionally valuable insight
― omar little, Thursday, 21 March 2024 18:56 (six months ago) link
otm
― CEO Greedwagon (Neanderthal), Thursday, 21 March 2024 19:05 (six months ago) link
I don't know if thats generally true, I think in many wars have an asymmetry about them, where one sides decides they'll have some or all of what the other side has. The other side usually has to consent to fight because the alternative is often even worse
― anvil, Thursday, 21 March 2024 19:12 (six months ago) link
I was meaning to contrast that with describing 'war' as people who are fleeing bombs when they were just trying to go to work or shelter
― CEO Greedwagon (Neanderthal), Thursday, 21 March 2024 19:20 (six months ago) link
Yeah I was gonna say - I don't think most wars start because two countries sit down together and decide to have a war. Also, Hamas sought to provoke war, hoping that Hezbollah (and possibly others) would join in.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, 21 March 2024 19:22 (six months ago) link
Yeah … though
_in war, both sides have usually consented to fight and have arms to fight with, but idk ymmv rando asshole_I don't know if thats generally true, I think in many wars have an asymmetry about them, where one sides decides they'll have some or all of what the other side has. The other side usually has to consent to fight because the alternative is often even worse
― sarahell, Thursday, 21 March 2024 19:23 (six months ago) link
― CEO Greedwagon (Neanderthal), Thursday, March 21, 2024 2:20 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
I still don't really understand what you mean tbh. Dude was still an asshat for what he said, but the civilians hurt in war are typically not the ones consenting to war.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, 21 March 2024 19:24 (six months ago) link
Like I talked about it with my mom who remembers watching the death count and bodybags of the Vietnam war on tv every night and how that motivated her, my family, and many other people to be peace activists because war is horrible and the atrocities happening in Palestine are common to wars. I feel like there is a generational difference here, where many Americans born here under 50 haven’t really seen this before…
― sarahell, Thursday, 21 March 2024 19:29 (six months ago) link
It makes me want to reread Baudrillard’s The Gulf War book
― sarahell, Thursday, 21 March 2024 19:30 (six months ago) link
I think the truth of the matter here is that this is not really a war. Hamas had an offensive 6 months ago, but since then it's just been the occupying power getting revenge by killing as many civilians and destroying as many buildings as possible.
― President Keyes, Thursday, 21 March 2024 19:32 (six months ago) link
I listened through the Blowback series on Iraq recently, pretty horrifying even as someone who was generally paying attention to what the US was doing both between the two wars and during the second Iraq war. xp
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, 21 March 2024 19:32 (six months ago) link
― President Keyes, Thursday, March 21, 2024 2:32 PM (twenty-nine seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink
I mean, Hamas has an armed militia of tens of thousands in Gaza, it's not like there's no one fighting. It's certainly not an even fight, but there has been fighting.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, 21 March 2024 19:34 (six months ago) link
It’s similar to Vietnam in that Hamas is somewhat a spectre where civilians can be portrayed as possible members or sympathizers, giving Israel the “excuse” to kill and destroy
― sarahell, Thursday, 21 March 2024 19:41 (six months ago) link
No idea if there's fighting going on or not because Israel won't let any reporters in and they're incapable of telling the truth.
― Tom D (the first British Asian ILXor) (Tom D.), Thursday, 21 March 2024 19:41 (six months ago) link
Hamas itself posts combat footage, although IDK what's going on currently
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, 21 March 2024 19:44 (six months ago) link
― President Keyes, Thursday, March 21, 2024 3:32 PM bookmarkflaglink
this is what I was admittedly clumsily getting at, my 'friend' wasn't saying "lots of civilians die in war", he was saying in war, soldiers die, it's expected, and he's treating civilians and Hamas fighters interchangably, when it's not a war, it's one country basically assaulting the Gaza strip with a litter of bombs and attacking unarmed civilians directly and have made the land unlivable already.
even if his point was "civilian casualties are an inevitability of war", the point wouldn't scan because they aren't even collateral damage, they're being targeted.
― CEO Greedwagon (Neanderthal), Thursday, 21 March 2024 19:45 (six months ago) link
even the battle with Hamas and Israel I hardly consider a war.
― CEO Greedwagon (Neanderthal), Thursday, 21 March 2024 19:47 (six months ago) link
or at least...not now.
― CEO Greedwagon (Neanderthal), Thursday, 21 March 2024 19:48 (six months ago) link
According to Israel (lol) they've killed 12,000 Hamas fighters, so I'vw no idea how many that leaves.
― Tom D (the first British Asian ILXor) (Tom D.), Thursday, 21 March 2024 19:48 (six months ago) link
“It’s war people die so what” is the ingrained response of an American who has lived with “collateral damage” their entire life as the phrase that differentiates between us killing innocent people and the bad guys who do it on purpose.
― papal hotwife (milo z), Thursday, 21 March 2024 19:50 (six months ago) link
more tellingly, his opinion about the Iraq war and the number of innocent people killed was decidedly different
― CEO Greedwagon (Neanderthal), Thursday, 21 March 2024 19:51 (six months ago) link
I think the “so what” part is the problem. I think that people who are the most outspoken protesting against the atrocities are assuming that those who are less visibly outraged are saying “so what” when that isn’t entirely true
― sarahell, Thursday, 21 March 2024 19:53 (six months ago) link
Whereas at least for most people I know it’s not “so what” it’s “that’s fucked up”
― sarahell, Thursday, 21 March 2024 19:57 (six months ago) link
Didn't we just see civilians in Ukraine targeted yesterday? I don't understand where 'Americans haven't seen this before' is coming from when we were seeing it on the news every day already.
I don't think civilians in wars are always targeted, (and it can be to varying degrees), but we don't have to go back very far to see examples of it all over TV even in the week or so before Oct 7.
― anvil, Thursday, 21 March 2024 19:58 (six months ago) link
Assad definitely targeted civilians in Syria
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, 21 March 2024 20:01 (six months ago) link
Good point!
― sarahell, Thursday, 21 March 2024 20:01 (six months ago) link
One clear point of difference at present between Gaza and some of these other situations is the use of starvation as a weapon against civilians (plus the razing of 35% of Gaza's buildings). It's obviously not unprecedented historically, but it does make expressions of indifference or cynical "it is what it is" type sentiments even more repellent imo
― rob, Thursday, 21 March 2024 21:03 (six months ago) link
Well, not unprecedented with respect to Syria.https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2017/11/syria-surrender-or-starve-strategy-displacing-thousands-amounts-to-crimes-against-humanity/
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, 21 March 2024 21:40 (six months ago) link
sure, but until recently most people likely wouldn't have thought of Israel as obviously similar to Syria. If the point is that any nation that goes to war will inevitably commit atrocities and descend into barbarism, I might actually agree with you, but I think it's safe to say that previously Western attitudes to Israel considered it to be on a higher moral plane than the Syrias of the world
― rob, Thursday, 21 March 2024 21:48 (six months ago) link
― sarahell, Thursday, 21 March 2024 21:49 (six months ago) link
He did say "obviously not unprecedented historically".
― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, 21 March 2024 21:51 (six months ago) link
Well yeah, but he said "these other situations," and the other situation I had just mentioned was Syria
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, 21 March 2024 21:52 (six months ago) link
ah no my post was in response to WWII St Petersburg example
― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, 21 March 2024 21:54 (six months ago) link
ah gotcha, nm
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, 21 March 2024 21:54 (six months ago) link
Starvation as a function of siege warfare (ie Leningrad) or total war (all the way back to the chevauchees of late medieval warfare) merits a pretty strong distinction from starving a captive national population (which is, uh, genocide).
― papal hotwife (milo z), Thursday, 21 March 2024 22:45 (six months ago) link
Milo otm. Also comparing and contrasting civilian murder, genocide, mass-starvation, mass-infrastructural elimination…. I don’t want to live in a world where we have to rank these “oh well see it was different and slightly better in Vietnam but slightly worse in Syria”. None of these things need and defence as being “not as bad” or “different” from that other time it happened. Absolutely ghastly way to approach war
― H.P, Thursday, 21 March 2024 22:51 (six months ago) link