“Gazans are cut off from the world and also each other, under a total siege and a communications blackout as the war enters a new phase. Israel’s military says it bombed 150 underground targets in northern Gaza, and has again urged residents there to move south. Hamas, which the UK has designated a terrorist organisation, said its fighters have clashed with Israeli troops in Beit Hanoun and the Bureij refugee camp. Warning, this report contains distressing images.“
Near the end of the video, a question is asked. It’s a common question that has been asked too many times, and as much as I think the askers are trying to help, it assumes that Palestinian people are somehow, let’s just say less intellectually robust than Israelis. This is where trying not to be racist, external or internalized, comes out as racism.
He asks if you are a Palestinian father, and your wife and children are killed in an Israeli airstrike, towards whom will your anger be directed?
The answer to this rhetorical question is supposed to be Israel right?
Right?
The assumption is that, of course, this person who has lost everything would automatically flip into a terrorist willing to kill Israeli fathers, wives, and children because the bomb that landed on them came from the state of Israel.
Forget that despite the dangers, there is a Palestinian opposition to Hamas.
Forget that despite a supposed 70% of Palestinians voting for Hamas (back when they were pretending to be somewhat humanitarian) a good 30% did not.
30% did not, despite all that has happened up to then.
Israelis whose relatives and friends were murdered and kidnapped by Hamas are undoubtedly angry with Hamas, but they also say, “Our government let us down.” They are also angry with the Israeli government for focusing the military on the West Bank, and grossly mismanaging and leaving the south undermanned.
Do people think Palestinians are stupid?
Do western people honestly think Palestinians are, by and large, oblivious to the fact that Hamas is using them as human shields?
Do the western and eastern people who ask this question think Palestinians don’t know who put them in the position they are in, and at least suspect that this situation is manufactured to cause maximum civilian casualties on purpose?
Maybe it’s just me, but I am pretty sure there are Palestinians out there blaming Hamas for this shitfest, not just Israel. I don’t think anyone who wasn’t already flipped is going to flip because of an Israeli bomb that strikes their family specifically, when there has been plenty of damage already.
Remember when I asked what kind of hell ride of a life one must have had to become an Islamic extremist?
Let me remind y’all out there about some things about being human. This is the time to see Palestinian people as humans, not as some vague apparitions shaped like humans.
If you would turn off your brain, not look for any more answers, and decide that killing babies personally with your gun or service knife, was a good thing, just because a bomb landed on your family, previously ignoring all of the bombs that landed on other people’s families, I am not talking to you. You can go into the pile of “people who are not intellectually robust enough to think about what caused a conflict.”
No doubt, Hamas is full of those, but then so are many militant groups including all the world’s militaries. Though it is not normal for a soldier to be a non thinker, there are many. What I’m talking about is the idea that a thinking person, the vast majority of people’s brains would just flip into total war because something happened to their immediate family. The idea that a person whose baby had been killed would suddenly decide that all the babies in a specific geographical region should be killed.
Forget why the baby was killed. Forget what brought about the situation. Forget who put the baby in the line of fire. Forget those people who did that basically poking a monster so that it would go on a rampage with your baby in stomping range. It’s all just the biggest monster with no responsibility to the little monsters who fed the baby to the biggest. Right?
Nope. I don’t think Palestinian people are stupid.
Please stop recycling soundbytes that assume they are.
