🇵🇸 A Quick Word on the Middle East Situation 🇮🇱

Actually this is a piece on extremism, nationalism & the inability of humans to see the nuance in complex situations.  It'll probably piss of some die-hard Israel/Palestine stans but fuck it--it needs to be said.  

Whether Israel "deserves to exist" in its current iteration is an intellectual exercise best reserved for dinner table discussions & college lectures/TED Talks.  They've been there since the 1940s and are not going anywhere so it would behoove Palestinians to learn to coexist with them peacefully.  The people from whom they originally took the land are mostly long dead.  That said, they have no right to keep land-grabbing and kicking people who live there NOW out of their homes or treating them as second-class citizens.  No right whatsoever.  What the Netanyahu government is doing is a crime against humanity & they're doing it with our help while the world looks on in apathy.  

In reality, there are many Israeli Jews & Palestinian Muslims & Christians who are not feeling this war and would stand with the "other side" against their own militant leaders if it was safe to do so.  But that story is not being told.  The media on both sides are painting a disgustingly biased picture that conveniently downplays or omits the evil deeds of both Hamas & the IDF.  Al-Jazeera English recently ran a story about the Israeli captives claiming that they were treated "well" in the headline.  This, after reports of rape, torture & murder came out days earlier.  Even if that hadn't been the case, in what universe does one include such a nonsensical qualifier about a violent terrorist group that kidnaps an 85-year-old civilian at gunpoint?  

A bit contradictory, dontchathink?  😒

Meanwhile the Western media has engaged in a total blackout on the hospital, refugee camp & school bombings that have killed & maimed hundreds of innocent Palestinians in favor of bogus "terror alerts" a la the post-9/11 color-coded warnings that never materialized.  Way to make it about us, ya narcissistic pricks.  

Predictably, the internet is full of shills screaming "Free Palestine! 🇵🇸" and "I Stand With Israel 🇮🇱 " as if these were 2 football teams about to kick off at the Superbowl... neither "side" seeing the humanity in the other's innocent civilian population or considering what it's like to live in a warzone.  I question whether media fairness would even change anything, as most of these hardheaded zealots have their minds made up beforehand like they did with COVID & other previous wars--facts be damned.  Still, what these rags are doing is unconscionable & they should be held both civilly & criminally liable when this is all over, as this is as close to yelling 'fire!' in a crowded theater as I've seen in my lifetime. 

Western media tropes hide Israel's war crimes (courtesy FAIR)

The unsexy reality is that women & children overwhelmingly shoulder the burden of wars started by extremist men.  Wars over land, religion, resources like oil/diamonds/opium, tribal conflicts & political disputes that could be settled in sane, rational ways if only leaders had the patience & political will to talk it out.  None of these issues is worth losing a single human life over.  We (women & children) disproportionately get no say in the matter as we're not represented at the highest levels of military/government yet we pay with our lives, being viewed as cannon fodder or unfortunate but necessary casualties in these dickswinging nationalist pissing contests.  And we're fucking sick of it.  

If you support the killing of innocent civilians in 2023 & beyond, you need to take a long hard look in the mirror because you're exhibiting sociopathic traits.  We should've evolved past this as a species long ago.  Committing murder & torture to solve disputes is as irrational as beating your child to "teach them not to hit their sister".  You're not doing it for the stated reason; you're doing it out of an uncontrollable rage to alleviate your own desire to let off steam & attain vengeance.  And this idea that "it's sad when innocents die but that's just an unavoidable part of war" IS supporting murder.  If you don't live in this region or have loved ones there, what you're doing (picking sides) is even more pathetic & shameful.

Anything less than loudly denouncing the killing of innocent men, women & children regardless of nationality is endorsing state-sponsored terrorism.  If these cowards in the IDF & Hamas can't do better at hitting their targets, i.e. the opposing extremist men in power, while leaving innocent bystanders unharmed, they should turn the guns on themselves because both sides are just ensuring never-ending blowback on their own people when they attack random innocents.  The reality is THEY DON'T CARE.  

Thousands of Palestinian & Israeli women march for peace (2017)

Picking a side in this conflict in the current year is like choosing between the Bloods & the Crips:  there's too much water under the bridge, too much blood on everyone's hands to deem either side morally superior.  While it's true Israel may have originally been founded on shady pretenses, strong-arming their way (back) into the Middle East in a brutal manner, the likelihood that they'll magically "go away" today is nonexistent.  But that doesn't mean they have the right to keep expanding Manifest Destiny-style while the world is silent.  Their ongoing occupation of Gaza & the West Bank since 1967 creates a constant tension that needn't exist, and it's ILLEGAL.  Their military's methods of warfare are too (starvation of civilians, "domicide," denial of humanitarian access & targeting medical centers among other horrors).  

And Hamas are no boyscouts either:  They're an offshoot of the Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood that uses human shields & child combatants while spouting anti-Semitic rhetoric & committing human rights abuses left & right.  If they had the firepower of Israel they'd likely wipe every Western nation off the map in a heartbeat to install Sharia Law or similar.  Forming a 2-state solution is likely the best outcome, yet this has failed to materialize in all these years due to the stubbornness of leaders from both sides who would rather sacrifice the lives of their own people than compromise with "the enemy" in the name of peace.  

...and so the senseless killing rages on with no end in sight.   Nothing patriotic or valiant about that.