This part always makes me feel ambivalent about the Israelites in the conflict. Israeli citizens are complicit victims, and that’s a contradiction but it’s also true. Civilians are getting hurt and dying and that’s not okay. However those same Israeli citizens are also supporting a basically genocidal government. Thousands of guidanceless rockets were fired at Isreal, are they expected not to respond? Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been victimized for their entire lives, are they expected not to respond?
If you’re just born in Tel Aviv or Gaza City, I don’t think you should be blamed for these military things. Maybe you support Hamas or Otzma Yehudit, but you’re kind of a product of your environment, and if tangential support is all you do you’re still a bystander. Maybe not a great example of humanity, but a bystander none the less.
I would have to be pretty truly desperate to consider aliyah myself, even before there was a war. I guess I could do it, and then support forces in Israel for peace, but I’m not sure if I’d make any difference, and they’re going to be reluctant to let in my never-practiced ass even without me being openly hostile to the whole project.
One of the downsides of having mandatory military service is that civilians aren’t exactly regular civilians. Even if they’re not serving now, most of the adult population in Israel has served in the army.
I don’t think that excuses sexual violence and executing children, but it definitely makes the context of civilians a lot murkier.
Yeah it did. Unfortunately though once the genie is out of the bottle it’s really hard to put it back in. War has it’s own momentum and it’s that momentum that needs to be resisted or expended before a war will stop. Perhaps I was unclear, I do not support any active combatants to the war and like every other war it’s the non-combatants who will suffer the most. As much as I would like to resist the momentum of war, I’m just a dude on the other side of the planet talking about something he barely knows.
This part always makes me feel ambivalent about the Israelites in the conflict. Israeli citizens are complicit victims, and that’s a contradiction but it’s also true. Civilians are getting hurt and dying and that’s not okay. However those same Israeli citizens are also supporting a basically genocidal government. Thousands of guidanceless rockets were fired at Isreal, are they expected not to respond? Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been victimized for their entire lives, are they expected not to respond?
If you’re just born in Tel Aviv or Gaza City, I don’t think you should be blamed for these military things. Maybe you support Hamas or Otzma Yehudit, but you’re kind of a product of your environment, and if tangential support is all you do you’re still a bystander. Maybe not a great example of humanity, but a bystander none the less.
I would have to be pretty truly desperate to consider aliyah myself, even before there was a war. I guess I could do it, and then support forces in Israel for peace, but I’m not sure if I’d make any difference, and they’re going to be reluctant to let in my never-practiced ass even without me being openly hostile to the whole project.
One of the downsides of having mandatory military service is that civilians aren’t exactly regular civilians. Even if they’re not serving now, most of the adult population in Israel has served in the army.
I don’t think that excuses sexual violence and executing children, but it definitely makes the context of civilians a lot murkier.
Fortunately, no child executions or rapes have been confirmed.
This kind of thinking is what got the troubles as bad as it was
Yeah it did. Unfortunately though once the genie is out of the bottle it’s really hard to put it back in. War has it’s own momentum and it’s that momentum that needs to be resisted or expended before a war will stop. Perhaps I was unclear, I do not support any active combatants to the war and like every other war it’s the non-combatants who will suffer the most. As much as I would like to resist the momentum of war, I’m just a dude on the other side of the planet talking about something he barely knows.