I don’t know how to confirm this myself but I have read and heard that before anything else, after it was known Hamas fighters were inside Israeli territory, the IDF first move militarily was to start bombing Gaza. No one can argue honestly that the IDF defends Israelis - its literally just the most reactionary of religious Zionists that they serve.

Secular Jewish Israelis? Nah they can fend for themselves for a few hours, we’ve gotta attack Palestinian civilians, says the IDF. And that’s not even bringing up that 20% of Israeli citizens ARE ARABS, some of whom were also attacked in their homes in Southern Israel 10 days ago, but of course the same people calling Hamas human animals will go after them next (not to suggest they aren’t already, only that Gazans face more immediate extermination).

The impression I had gotten from interviews (Al Jazeera, the Guardian, Haaretz) was that Israeli civilian police were there and exchanged fire with Hamas but that it was HOURS before they came across any IDF personnel. I’ve been focusing on this less as the time goes on and the catastrophic situation in Gaza gets worse and worse, so maybe further sources have come out regarding the Nova Festival.

Regardless I would like to see consequences to the people who authorized a festival so close to Gaza in the first place…

Earlier this week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken deleted and replaced a post on X, the former Twitter, in which he mentioned Turkey’s calls for a ceasefire

God, they even KNOW what’s right and then scramble to make themselves wrong

Hope these are accurate! PiS’s actions towards democracy and free press are sickening

Damn right when the premium plan is going up (at least in my country)

There are a lot of people on the left who think that they oppose things by adopting the reverse of whatever Mainstream Media says or by unironically endorsing what the right wing fear mongers about.

For example, if the Mainstream media dehumanises Palestinians, then they should dehumanise Israelis back. Opposing Israeli apartheid is not only the same as supporting Hamas but not supporting Hamas means your don’t REALLY care about Palestinian liberation.

Another example being that liberals and conservatives fear monger about how Palestianians all want to kill Israelis and anyone who supports the settler state, and so some people on the left adopt that as their actual viewpoint in order to “oppose” the right.

I can’t think of a single successful revolution that didn’t end up with significant civilian casualties

A gross oversimplification. Will civilians inevitably get got in the crossfire or be targeted by reactionaries during protests as part of the revolution? Sure. But there’s a difference between that and seeking out and targeting a site without a military presence and civilians from more than just Israel.

Remember the Reign of Terror in France?

Not a good example to cite since that destabilized revolutionary france and helped create the conditions for Napoleon to rise to power.

Revolution is bloody and revolution leads to civilian casualties, but at its core it’s caused by systematic oppression by the government and inaction on behalf of the population

Again, a revolution is bloody because of the people reacting against it, it doesn’t have to be because your side decided to target civilians and perpetuate cycles of violence. The revolutions that created long lasting new paradigms didn’t serve as vehicles to enact vengeance.

Both are crimes under various international laws, some people seem to think you fight one by committing the other

I get it, but it saddens me to think how many people might be around me both irl and online that would be alright with or even happy about the death of unarmed people of all ages and genders. Or that the people on the left in particular (since that’s my camp) suddenly don’t care about sexual violence if it’s being perpetrated against someone they’ve decided deserved it or was a legitimate target because of social grievances

My side is the good side and therefore is justified in its actions! It can’t do something wrong against those monsters!

“Both are evil” rhetoric is often used to justify or obfuscate one sides crimes, and because on the broader scale, Israel unfolds destruction and death at a higher scale, so there’s a lot of intense emotions from thise keyed into Palestinian struggle. That’s why so many want you to pick.

It is important to remember Hamas ≠ Palestinians, and Israeli government ≠ Israeli citizens. Yes, they live in a colonial state, but Hamas doesn’t care if they try to fight to change it or not, furthermore, most left leaning people are in colonial states or in former colonizing states so they are basically saying they think violence against them is justified too. Everyone should be aware of their privileges and work to dismantle the systems that create them, but that doesn’t mean they need be killed in order to realize that!

It’s ridiculous because you’re absolutely right too, Israeli calling them all “human animals” and doing a total blockade of Gaza is a war crime, but so is what happened to Shani Louk. In the world I am fighting for, the people responsible for both would be held accountable.

Its cause they do it to non-Europeans in Gaza or stand aside while settlers in the West Bank do it

You can literally find Palestinian diplomats on BBC and AL Jazeera doing exactly that while placing it in the wider context of the 50+ year occupation and the fact that Israel is still the bigger military force in this

Theres pointing out bias and theres making bad-faith accusations of motive with no basis

Yes, let’s escalate the conflict further, surely this will save lives!

Invading Russia = making political inroads into their historical sphere of influence. The “existential” threat to Russia is that it loses its historic colonial outposts.

If the rules of “secularism” disproportionately impact people only of certain religions then that is displaying favoritism, implicitly saying “this religion is approved, this religion is not”. That’s not very secular.

I get what you’re trying to say - historically “Muslim garb” was just “desert garb” suited to the dry heat but I do also think these terms have some religious connotation now.

What really grinds my gears in this is that actual Muslim feminists, not just white knight crusaders (and i pick that word deliberately) Europe are out there and people who claim to be worried about how Islam treats women could you know, listen to their perspectives instead of just assuming European “secular” values are objectively better.

So who then?

So now its “secularism is when some religions are better than others?”

No, secularism is when no hijab ./s