I try to keep politics to Twitter, but felt the need to say something on Palestine/Israel, in case there’s still any fence sitters reading this.
For anyone out of the loop, there’s an ongoing genocide in Gaza being done by Israel, in response to a major terrorist attack on October 7th in which 1,000 Israeli civilians and tourists were killed. So far, nearly 20,000 have been killed in Gaza, the majority of which are women and children, and almost all civilians. Infrastructure in Gaza has been destroyed – hospitals, universities, utilities – so around two million people are displaced without food, water or medical care for over 2 months now.
There’s a lot of history and details there that I’m not qualified to talk about (this has been ongoing for 75 years, after the UK apparently promised the land to both sides), but this scale of devastation hasn’t been seen in decades. The important thing to note is that Israel holds 90% of the power in this conflict (as you may be able to tell by the death counts) and is fully supported by the USA, with the UK government also being supportive. With that advantage, most of what they’ve accomplished has been to kill and displace civilians and take land, instead of any “self defense” goals.
I feel the need to speak up since the UK government (and the opposition party too) are complicit in this.
In my opinion, the invasion of Iraq was the worst thing the UK government has done in my lifetime, and this feels like a similarly awful foreign policy blunder. I’ve been attending ceasefire marches to absolve me of my shitty government’s actions, for whatever that’s worth. I also chipped in £500 to Medical Aid for Palestinians and £500 to Doctors Without Borders.
Humanitarian organizations are saying that their medical staff are being targeted by Israeli forces, so I respect any work they manage to do in these circumstances.
Anyway, this all sucks, and I would like to see a ceasefire and negotiations for long term solutions.
Matt, let me leave some word of advice.
This problem is not your fault. It’s not because of what you did or did not do that led to this current crisis. It’s also not something you have to take on yourself. Even a fraction of it.
Sometimes, it’s important to step back and realize that this problem is infinitely large. It can go on for as long as humanity is alive, and will continue to last close til humanity’s death. Treating this infinite problem with finite solutions is no use. With or without help, the events that occurred on October 7th, 2023 still occurred. There was nothing the world could have done to prevent it, and it’s important not to both underestimate the issue at hand, but also overestimate the amount of help the entire world as a whole can contribute to the solution to this potentially infinte problem.
I have looked at this issue up and down and realized really quickly that this problem is not worth wasting my time and money and energy and interest on. This issue is between Palestine, Hamas, Jewish People, and Israel’s government. It’s not a surprise that only two of the four groups are willing to work for peace while the other two are calling the shots. I can spend all my time, my energy, my money, and my interest on these folks, but the truth is, both Jewish and Palestine know that this region is very troublesome and if they don’t like to be part of it, they need to motivate themselves and find ways to leave the region, and depower the government that runs on their support to push their agendas.
Which is why the only solution I see is to move folks who are tired of this region’s troubles out of the region. The only thing now is instead of trying to achieve what both Palestinians and Jewish folks want, is to deny them both and let them know the world hates conflict and will punish them for being terrible siblings.
America is funding this – American politicians, and Western politicians in general, have huge influence over what happens there.
This couldn’t happen without Western interference. Your taxes pay for the bombs.
I’m so poor that the IRS doesn’t collect taxes from me. Instead, I get a form of tax credit from them. So “my taxes pay for the bombs” just isn’t true with me.
Well I won’t go into a deep discussion about the complex state of my country, but the Gaza strip is governed by a terrorist organization named Hamas, which for the last decade has been launching rockets on Israeli towns and cities on a yearly basis. After the recent massive terrorist attack led by them, Israel declared war with the goal of destroying Hamas and bringing peace to the citizens near the strip. Sadly, Hamas uses kindergartens and hospitals as a basis of operation, or as weapon storage sites. There is always a warning an hour before an aerial bombing on a building [1], and the IDF has issued a warning 2 weeks prior to the Palestinians to evacuate southwards to Rafah pass [2], sadly not all of them evacuated (partially because Hamas prevents them from doing so). Personally I do think we don’t help the refugees enough, but as an IDF soldier who’s about to enter the strip if the conflict doesn’t end soon, I know for a fact that we don’t target civilians, and especially not international medical support. (I won’t provide source for that because It’s annoying to find an English article. Basically this isn’t a deep analysis, I just searched up what I know is true. Hopefully anyone who reads this will try to look at thing from a different angle)
Anyways, I hope will end ASAP and we could all continue playing your games, Matt. Best regards!
[1]-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sumq8ktYOTI a video from one of the recent conflicts in 2021
[2]-https://www.npr.org/2023/12/06/1217548417/israel-hamas-war-gaza-evacuation-map-messages
Your comment may be deleted. I have already seen several comments disappear, this guy is not looking for dialogue, he is looking for people who think like him.
I delete comments that are needlessly inflammatory.
You’re just repeating your governments’ propaganda – much of which has already been proven false by reputable news and humanitarian organisations from around the world.
Even if it were all true, it still wouldn’t justify what Israel is doing. If Hamas is evil for killing civilians, the IDF has paid that back twenty times over and is still doing more.
If I were you I wouldn’t risk my life for a government that puts your life in danger with imperialist policies, but I hope you stay safe regardless.
The problem is… Everything that happened on oct 7 was by people who witnessed the death of their family and decided to revenge.. Everything they did was a resistance… Before Oct7 people think there was peace.. but no.. they were slowly dying but now finally everyone sees it… Now we discover worse and worse truths like… IDF lying about civilians dead in oct 7 then lying about them being civilians and then exposing their Apache killing their own people to make Hamas look bad… it was all for a propaganda… I really do not wish peace… not because I hate peace… But I will never tell the oppressed to have peace with whoever coldheartedly killed their own family… Israel needs to be accounted for its sins along with US and all its lies… and also.. They literally should give Palestinians their land back…