this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2024
114 points (79.4% liked)

Asklemmy

43897 readers
966 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy πŸ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I genuinely do not know who the bad guys are. S lot of my leftist friends are against Israel, but from what I know Israel was attacked and is responding and trying to get their hostages back.

Enlighten me. Am I wrong? Why am I wrong?

And dumb it down for me, because apparently I'm an idiot.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Just count the dead, injured, displaced, starved, and dehydrated on either side. You'll find pretty quickly the numbers are extremely disproportionate. If that's [not] a baseline consideration for your judgment then you should think on that.

[Edit in brackets]

[–] [email protected] -5 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

I generally agree that the response seems lopsided. However, I also find it odd that Hamas simply hasn't returned the hostages. This to me signifies two possibilities- they are not actually interested in peace, or they don't believe that returning the hostages will stop Israel's destruction.

Would that appraisal of the situation seem reasonable?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago

Hamas wants to trade those hostages for Palestinian hostages. Which have been imprisoned for decades.

It is a tale of "Israel started it" and the Palestinians have no other possible way to make demands from Israel than using the same tactics.

Israel openly says they will continue the destruction. Even if Hamas releases the hostages. Their government does not care about hostages. But the Israeli people do. Hamas would be giving up the only leverage they have against Israel by releasing the hostages.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Not really. Israel has a vested interest in continuing this land grab. The hostages are a convenient excuse, but separate from the inciting event. Furthermore it's just as likely the hostages have been killed in israeli bombings.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I see. So you think Israel wants the hostages to be kept in order to give them a public excuse to continue their campaign?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

No. I said they're a convenient excuse. If they were to return then a new excuse would be found. The impetus for this campaign started as "self defense" in response to the Oct 7 attack. Then when that was no longer sufficient to justify things they moved onto the hostages as a bargaining chip.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 weeks ago

There is a lot more to this way than just the hostage situation - Israel has been in control of Palestinian territory for a long time (they consider it theirs) and they have been fighting with the Hamas organization for years now. This is the single worst escalation of it.

Hamas doesn't want peace. The status quo is domination of Palestine under Israel government - erasure of Palestine effectively if they laid down arms and disbanded. They want liberty, and payback for hardships.

There isn't reason to believe Israel will stop the attacks on return of the hostages, as they have gone overwhelmingly above and beyond the total damage done by Hamas (even comparing women and children victims vs. the concert raid that started it all) and given Netanyahu's far right government is at the helm, so your second point has merit.