One reason for this is these shows don’t tend to show the morally questionable things a resistance has to do to be able to win. So it’s a lot easier to side with the resistance in Star Wars when they’re just fighting conventionally against the empire. I think a much better depiction of resistance can be seen in Star Trek Deep Space Nine with the Bajorans. They fought the Cardasians in a guerilla war which often led to civilians on both sides being killed. It’s a lot more murky but the Bajorans are still unequivocally viewed as the good guys since it was the only way to resist and get rid of the Cardasians and stop them from killing their people.
They blew up the death star! That was full of people. Thousands and thousands of soldiers and engineers, pilots etc. We all cheered. Id say it was pretty morally questionable.
Isn’t the death star specifically a military spaceship? You can’t just choose not to fire at a battleship just because there are engineers who won’t personally shoot at you in it.
I’ve had this argument with people before. It was a military installation so a viable target by the rules of war, you don’t need to be a combatant to be in the military. Even when they upgraded to an entire planet as a weapon they still only ever show military personnel being located there. Meanwhile the empire demonstrably killed civilians when they blew up entire planets.
Of course it’s all a bit arbitrary because people have just decided for themselves that it wasn’t purely a military installation, and that it had civilians and children onboard, even though they never showed that.
I think you can blame Star Trek for that view. TNG often showed families about the Enterprise whereas the original TV show was strictly ‘military’ in function. I’m old enough to have seen the OG Star Wars in theater, the Death Star was purely military. Anyone that died on it was a soldier.
A slight older real world conflict that people are forgetting was the Irish Republican Army vs the British Army. Lots of bombings that killed civilians by the IRA. The Brits tried to not kill civilians, and they mostly succeeded. But they were still often viewed as the baddies.
Revolutionaries are very often a morally dark group. They are often willing to go above and beyond to justify killing to achieve their goals. But historically sometimes, it appears to a necessary thing to do so.
Edited for extra words - drink more tea before typing I guess
It’s not a space ship, it’s a space station. Obi Wan says so. Yes, it’s a space station that flies around like a ship. Why does that not make it a ship? Fuck if I know, ask George Lucas.
We aren’t speaking about employee in an hydroelectric dam. Even if both took part in an the economy of an oppressive system, one give electricity, the other mass murder. If they do not agree with, they think that taking part in this crime give them more chance than deserting.
Whenever You Gamble, My Friend, Eventually You’ll Lose.
Depends though doesn’t it. Was it conscription or voluntary. Some of those military were forced to join the empire or have their planets blown up. Obviously many were zealots but im sure if it wasnt for vader, many of the soldiers wouldnt have joined.
When it comes to people being forced into the military is it still fair game?
I can only speak for myself but yes even being conscripted would put you in the fair game category.
If I am given the choice between slaughtering others or risking being shot in the back as I run away, I’m going to take the risk of getting shot.
Someone will now come in and call me a liar and I really don’t mind. I do put the value of others lives above mine on a regular basis. Volunteer firefighters do it every day.
[Edited to remove unnecessary crudeness. Old habits die hard.]
No, the Empire only recently gained the ability to blow up planets. No one joined under threat of their planet being blown up.
And yes, conscripts are fair game. Unless they A) rebel against their commanders and/or B) immediately surrender. As long as they keep running the death machine, they are culpable.
They are serving in the Empire’s Army, so yes. Despite the fact that they were conscripted. If they didn’t want to be killed, they should have organized a massive uprising against their leaders and surrendered the Death Star to the rebel scum.
Great film. I always considered the contracters to be closer to slave labourers. The empire took prisoners, if personal politics would get in the way then a laser gun would surely convince anyone unwilling to help.
I love the Bajorans and their struggles, both externally and within their own politics and religion. I think most people who got bored with the Bajorans were just hoping for more battles against the Borg.
They might’ve even been turned off by the focus on religion in the first place. Roddenberry was famously outspoken against religion (due to rejecting his upbringing). I think TOS and TNG went pretty far towards cultivating a large audience of atheist and agnostic fans. Many of these would’ve been pretty turned off by the depiction of religious characters in anything but a negative light. When you go from being raised religious to being an atheist who rejects all that, it’s hard to walk back to being neutral or open-minded about religion once again.
IRL there are much more complex and serious outcomes which cannot be pre-determined. Hindsight will not save the day as consequences are terrible.
For example, here is some imaginary bullshit that will never happen…
“Things that will never happen for 500, Alex”
<imaginary BS/>
I wish North America or South America or even Europe can setup an Ashkenazi Independent Autonomous Area … perhaps Alsace-Lorraine ? Or somewhere between Poland and Russia ? Any and all Israeli and Philistine citizens wishing to live in peace and harmony can and should move there and re-integrate back into Europe.
Palestinian land should be returned to the original settlers and descendants of those lands since the fall of the Roman Empire.
Hopefully a Joint-UN-led Area of Non-Violence should be established stretching from the Mediterranean to the borders of Pakistan. No “Country” or “Border” or anything. Just Non-Violence DMZ. Any weapons or violence will be considered Death-Sentence through International-Court-for-War-Crimes.
<end-of-imaginary BS/>
We can all dream up solutions that all sound good, but IRL isnt like that. Things dont happen as they should or as we want them to play out.
Hypothetical and IRL are very very different. Other peoples guilt doesnt apply to people who never committed the sin. This is exactly the reason I “made up” a situation and you had to prove my point so adequately. “Things that happened but I never said it had to happen for 500, Alex”.
Also, by your analogue, you consider Europeans as barbaric enough to replicate “the trail of tears”. Dude chill. No one is solving the middle-east by implementing “hypothetical” scenarios. It wont work IRL. So chill out.
In the Americas? Shouldn’t people in the Americas be returning the land to the indigenous Americans and returning to the homes of our European ancestors?
By the way, the last place my grandmother lived in Scotland was turned into a Tesco. Should I bomb it since I have an indigenous right to my homeland?
If you like to go bombing in Tesco Scotland I am sure the Scottish would be cheering for you as well :'D
Also real life isnt as simple as “return the land to the previous owners who are all dead and wiped out and the remaining mixed descendants are mostly 1/16th or 1/64th or some piddling fractions of the original settlers”
It is easy to ask for Forgiveness rather than ask for Permission.
Imagine if European Settlers " IF you already are on this land , can we get permission to enslave, infect and eradicate you? Please with sugar and cherry on top ?" AND JESUS HIMSELF APPEARED … " Die all you Bigotted, Misbegotten Sons of Satan! " … Just imagine the Vatican and Church of England catching Fire Spontaneously and restoring Christianity to its roots!!!
"Things that Never Happened for 5,000,000 Alex! "
:-D Comedy gold if every wrongdoer got their just desserts instant Karma style ! :-D
The Palestinian struggle would get more sympathy if Hamas wasn’t involved. Hamas is delighted with the high civilian death toll because of the backlash against Israel from people who place far more value on human lives than they do.
Also important: the shows show a very personal narrative about the protagonist enduring oppression themselves. The media does occasionally try to show that, but it’s hard to empathise from a distance with experiences so traumatic.
Also empires are always building super-weapons in fiction and not the railroads/bridges/tax offices and all other boring shit that empires tend to do.
The last ‘super weapon’ to be used in anger was made by the glorious republic (USA) against the Evil empire (Japan). The genocides meanwhile tend to be perpetrated with boring old bombs, shells and blockades.
What about the Maquis? That’s another side to a resistance. Most times resistance movements accomplish exactly nothing and everyone would have been better off if they just worked with the existing government to improve things. Sometimes it’s just about egos and personal vendettas more than they are about any kind of cause. A lot of people die for nothing.
Other than the Maquis, we mostly tell the stories about resistances that were successful. This serves to romanticize the idea of a resistance and makes people feel that victory for a resistance is inevitable. It’s not. Most of the time it’s just causing death and destruction so that a few resistance leaders can have power over people before the resistance movement fades out.
Nearly every resistance movement ever has been pushed by outside actors. It’s extremely rare for these outside actors to have the best interests of the people they’re supposedly supporting. Countries don’t have friends, they have interests. This aspect of a resistance is rarely portrayed in fiction too.
While I do generally agree there are times when working with the government isn’t possible, much like with what’s happening in Israel. Israel has shown they’re not gonna make things better unless they’re forced to. Sure you can argue the resistance isn’t gonna work and is just a way for the leaders to have power but that doesn’t mean resisting in general isn’t justified. Even if resistance is futile it doesn’t mean that trying to resist is bad.
Israel’s primary motive has always been the safety of their people. Currently there’s Israelis being held against their will in Gaza.
It’s not really all that complicated really. Biden is doing his best to get Hamas to release the hostages, but Hamas just isn’t doing that. Israel isn’t going to just say “I guess it’s fine for Hamas to do whatever they want with our people”.
With the Palestinian resistance, it’s a “you either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain” kind of thing. If land was taken from you, sure the people that took it from you have done you wrong. But if you’re using violence because to restore the ethnic makeup to how it was in a history book, then you’re a fascists. Over time it has changed from the first to the latter. They should’ve taken taken the deal offered in the 1990s but they chose to continue using violence instead. So now if there ever is a Palestinian state it will be much worse off than it would’ve been had there not been a resistance. People could be living good lives, their families would be safe living in a Palestinian state if not for this romanticized resistance. As the resistance continues a potential future Palestinian becomes more and more diminished.
This is the problem with the romantization of resistance, and war in general. We have a strange respect for Germans who fought to the bitter end in WWII and we don’t respect Italian soldiers who surrendered at first contact with the enemy. Personally I respect Italians who refused to fight for Mussolini over the Germans who fought to the bitter end for Hitler. Similarly I also don’t respect people who fight for the authoritarian Hamas who are only hurting the Palestinian people.
The world would be a better place if we didn’t romanticize using violence for lost causes under authoritarian leaders.
I’m not arguing that Israel should just sit down and let them do whatever they want. I’m just saying that resistance is justified when it’s clear all the other side wants to do is take your home and push you and your people out. Israel is ultimately responsible for giving evil groups like Hamas support as it’s hard for Palestinians to care about their beliefs when the other side is indiscriminately killing your people and trying to either push you out or treat you as a second class citizen. All they see is a group that is trying to fight against the people doing that so they support it. Cause the only other option is to lay down and get bulldozed by Israel. Without fighting Israel has no reason to care or negotiate, and even with fighting they barely have a reason to care with all the support they get from the western world.
Also it’s pretty clear they don’t really care about the safety of their people. See all the protests against how the government is handling the situation in Israel and the fact that their indiscriminate fighting against Hamas has killed many of the hostages they’re trying to save. It’s just an excuse to expand their control and get rid of more of the Palestinians from the region.
I do agree that the goals of getting rid of Jews from the region are terrible and not possible but the solution isn’t to let them keep pushing the Palestinians out more and more. That would be like saying during the time of manifest destiny well it’s impossible to give the native Americans all their land back cause we live here now so they should stop fighting back and let us take more of their land.
Do you think Palestinians are animals? You’re talking as if Palestinians aren’t responsible for their actions and aren’t capable of making rational decisions. So it seems to me that you think Palestinians are animals and no one should expect them to act like civilized people.
And that’s where we disagree. I think Palestinians are people and therefore are responsible for their actions. What Hamas did on October 7 was a decision they made. They are responsible for that decision. They should face justice for what they did just as any other people in the world would. Because they aren’t animals, they are people that committed a horrible crime.
Ideally the Palestinian people would turn on Hamas and send the leaders of Hamas to either Israel (or the ICJ if they’re capable of considering Palestinians as humans that are responsible for their actions) to face justice for the crimes they committed. But they aren’t doing that. That is a decision they are making. Because they are people making decisions, not animals.
Because of the inability (or unwillgness) of the Palestions to remove Hamas from power, military action is required. At the very least to get the hostages out. Ideally to bring the leadership of Hamas to justice if that’s possible.
I think because you’re thinking of Palestinians as animals that aren’t capable of making decisions and therefore aren’t responsible for their actions you can’t understand the magnitude of the crimes Hamas has committed.
Please make more of an effort to think of Palestinians as people that are responsible for their actions, ok?
No I’m just saying that Israel is more responsible for Hamas than the Palestinians. If Israel wanted to they could stop their oppressive programs and the expansion of their state through settlers. They could take more care when trying to fight Hamas which it’s pretty clear they don’t right now with the number of civilian deaths and massacres that have happened. You’re trying to say instead of resisting that they should try to negotiate, but without the threat of violent resistance if the negotiations don’t go through then what reason does Israel have to negotiate? If there’s no resistance they can just ignore the Palestinians attempts to negotiate or stall them indefinitely while they continue to push them out of their homes. And yes Hamas is bad and them winning wouldn’t be a good thing but it’s understandable why Palestinians would support them when the only other option is to lay down and die. And yes their resistance is probably not gonna stop Israel in the long run, only international pressure and sanctions on Israel would actually get them to stop the terrible things they’re doing. But that doesn’t mean trying to resist is bad cause again the only other option is to lay down and let the Israel state bulldozer over you and your people.
Also though the idea that any resistance is just good people forced to make difficult choices that upset them is crazy - a lot of ‘resistance movements’ are brutal and cruel because that’s what they belive in, Lord’s Resistance Army is a resistance movement against the powerful and so they say evil government - their leader Kony is not a heroic movie character.
Even if like many here you hate Isreal it’s still very difficult to ignore the evils hamas have committed, certainly their leader living in Qatar is not luke Skywalker or Morphius, he’s an awful person who believes awful things.
Yeah that’s definitely not something that’s shown as much in media. The fact that usually resistance groups that do well tend to be the more extreme ones. Probably because of their beliefs they’re willing to fight back in ways other groups wouldn’t which limits those other groups’ effectiveness. And then because the more extreme groups are seen as more effective at resisting the occupying power they end up getting more support from the people than more moderate groups.
But at least in the case of Israel part of the reason Hamas is able to have so much support from the people and power is Israel’s fault for all the terrible things they’ve done to the Palestinians. In media when the evil government does evil things the resistance gains support and the same things happens in real life even if the resistance is also doing terrible things. They’re seen as at least better than the oppressors who are actively killing their friends and families.
One reason for this is these shows don’t tend to show the morally questionable things a resistance has to do to be able to win. So it’s a lot easier to side with the resistance in Star Wars when they’re just fighting conventionally against the empire. I think a much better depiction of resistance can be seen in Star Trek Deep Space Nine with the Bajorans. They fought the Cardasians in a guerilla war which often led to civilians on both sides being killed. It’s a lot more murky but the Bajorans are still unequivocally viewed as the good guys since it was the only way to resist and get rid of the Cardasians and stop them from killing their people.
They blew up the death star! That was full of people. Thousands and thousands of soldiers and engineers, pilots etc. We all cheered. Id say it was pretty morally questionable.
Isn’t the death star specifically a military spaceship? You can’t just choose not to fire at a battleship just because there are engineers who won’t personally shoot at you in it.
I’ve had this argument with people before. It was a military installation so a viable target by the rules of war, you don’t need to be a combatant to be in the military. Even when they upgraded to an entire planet as a weapon they still only ever show military personnel being located there. Meanwhile the empire demonstrably killed civilians when they blew up entire planets.
Of course it’s all a bit arbitrary because people have just decided for themselves that it wasn’t purely a military installation, and that it had civilians and children onboard, even though they never showed that.
I think you can blame Star Trek for that view. TNG often showed families about the Enterprise whereas the original TV show was strictly ‘military’ in function. I’m old enough to have seen the OG Star Wars in theater, the Death Star was purely military. Anyone that died on it was a soldier.
A slight older real world conflict that people are forgetting was the Irish Republican Army vs the British Army. Lots of bombings that killed civilians by the IRA. The Brits tried to not kill civilians, and they mostly succeeded. But they were still often viewed as the baddies.
Revolutionaries are very often a morally dark group. They are often willing to go above and beyond to justify killing to achieve their goals. But historically sometimes, it appears to a necessary thing to do so.
Edited for extra words - drink more tea before typing I guess
yes. it’s akin to blow up an aircraft carrier.
It’s not a space ship, it’s a space station. Obi Wan says so. Yes, it’s a space station that flies around like a ship. Why does that not make it a ship? Fuck if I know, ask George Lucas.
They blew up an enemy military ship that had already destroyed a peaceful planet and was in the process of killing them.
Nice try
Which presents the dilemma perfectly. Decision to destroy the planet was made by a higher-up, thus do all Death Star “employees” deserve to die?
We aren’t speaking about employee in an hydroelectric dam. Even if both took part in an the economy of an oppressive system, one give electricity, the other mass murder. If they do not agree with, they think that taking part in this crime give them more chance than deserting.
Whenever You Gamble, My Friend, Eventually You’ll Lose.
They are military, not employees. Fair game.
Depends though doesn’t it. Was it conscription or voluntary. Some of those military were forced to join the empire or have their planets blown up. Obviously many were zealots but im sure if it wasnt for vader, many of the soldiers wouldnt have joined.
When it comes to people being forced into the military is it still fair game?
I can only speak for myself but yes even being conscripted would put you in the fair game category.
If I am given the choice between slaughtering others or risking being shot in the back as I run away, I’m going to take the risk of getting shot.
Someone will now come in and call me a liar and I really don’t mind. I do put the value of others lives above mine on a regular basis. Volunteer firefighters do it every day.
[Edited to remove unnecessary crudeness. Old habits die hard.]
No, the Empire only recently gained the ability to blow up planets. No one joined under threat of their planet being blown up.
And yes, conscripts are fair game. Unless they A) rebel against their commanders and/or B) immediately surrender. As long as they keep running the death machine, they are culpable.
Only a sith deals in absolutes!
That’s not an absolute system. It’s a system where a person’s culpability is determined by their actions.
They are serving in the Empire’s Army, so yes. Despite the fact that they were conscripted. If they didn’t want to be killed, they should have organized a massive uprising against their leaders and surrendered the Death Star to the rebel scum.
And Mr Stevens, the head of catering.
You know Mr Stevens?
Geoff Vader said he could kill him with a tray.
RIP.
Yea but it’s never mentioned ! Might have well been an unmanned satellite
Well, it certainly wasn’t a moon!
😂😂😂
a lot of em were just contractors
“I’ll bet there were independent contractors working on that thing: plumbers, aluminum siders, roofers.”
Great film. I always considered the contracters to be closer to slave labourers. The empire took prisoners, if personal politics would get in the way then a laser gun would surely convince anyone unwilling to help.
The Palestinian struggle is one source of inspiration for the Bajorans. It boggles my mind when I read comments that ‘Bajoran’ episodes are boring.
I love the Bajorans and their struggles, both externally and within their own politics and religion. I think most people who got bored with the Bajorans were just hoping for more battles against the Borg.
They might’ve even been turned off by the focus on religion in the first place. Roddenberry was famously outspoken against religion (due to rejecting his upbringing). I think TOS and TNG went pretty far towards cultivating a large audience of atheist and agnostic fans. Many of these would’ve been pretty turned off by the depiction of religious characters in anything but a negative light. When you go from being raised religious to being an atheist who rejects all that, it’s hard to walk back to being neutral or open-minded about religion once again.
Fiction SHOULD NOT be equated to real-life.
IRL there are much more complex and serious outcomes which cannot be pre-determined. Hindsight will not save the day as consequences are terrible.
For example, here is some imaginary bullshit that will never happen…
“Things that will never happen for 500, Alex”
<imaginary BS/>
I wish North America or South America or even Europe can setup an Ashkenazi Independent Autonomous Area … perhaps Alsace-Lorraine ? Or somewhere between Poland and Russia ? Any and all Israeli and Philistine citizens wishing to live in peace and harmony can and should move there and re-integrate back into Europe.
Palestinian land should be returned to the original settlers and descendants of those lands since the fall of the Roman Empire.
Hopefully a Joint-UN-led Area of Non-Violence should be established stretching from the Mediterranean to the borders of Pakistan. No “Country” or “Border” or anything. Just Non-Violence DMZ. Any weapons or violence will be considered Death-Sentence through International-Court-for-War-Crimes.
<end-of-imaginary BS/>
We can all dream up solutions that all sound good, but IRL isnt like that. Things dont happen as they should or as we want them to play out.
So the trail of tears is what sounds good to you.
Hypothetical and IRL are very very different. Other peoples guilt doesnt apply to people who never committed the sin. This is exactly the reason I “made up” a situation and you had to prove my point so adequately. “Things that happened but I never said it had to happen for 500, Alex”.
Also, by your analogue, you consider Europeans as barbaric enough to replicate “the trail of tears”. Dude chill. No one is solving the middle-east by implementing “hypothetical” scenarios. It wont work IRL. So chill out.
In the Americas? Shouldn’t people in the Americas be returning the land to the indigenous Americans and returning to the homes of our European ancestors?
By the way, the last place my grandmother lived in Scotland was turned into a Tesco. Should I bomb it since I have an indigenous right to my homeland?
If you like to go bombing in Tesco Scotland I am sure the Scottish would be cheering for you as well :'D
Also real life isnt as simple as “return the land to the previous owners who are all dead and wiped out and the remaining mixed descendants are mostly 1/16th or 1/64th or some piddling fractions of the original settlers”
It is easy to ask for Forgiveness rather than ask for Permission.
Imagine if European Settlers " IF you already are on this land , can we get permission to enslave, infect and eradicate you? Please with sugar and cherry on top ?" AND JESUS HIMSELF APPEARED … " Die all you Bigotted, Misbegotten Sons of Satan! " … Just imagine the Vatican and Church of England catching Fire Spontaneously and restoring Christianity to its roots!!!
"Things that Never Happened for 5,000,000 Alex! "
:-D Comedy gold if every wrongdoer got their just desserts instant Karma style ! :-D
The Palestinian struggle would get more sympathy if Hamas wasn’t involved. Hamas is delighted with the high civilian death toll because of the backlash against Israel from people who place far more value on human lives than they do.
Also important: the shows show a very personal narrative about the protagonist enduring oppression themselves. The media does occasionally try to show that, but it’s hard to empathise from a distance with experiences so traumatic.
Also empires are always building super-weapons in fiction and not the railroads/bridges/tax offices and all other boring shit that empires tend to do.
The last ‘super weapon’ to be used in anger was made by the glorious republic (USA) against the Evil empire (Japan). The genocides meanwhile tend to be perpetrated with boring old bombs, shells and blockades.
I agree re: DS9 and SW with the recent but noteworthy exception of “Andor.”
Yeah, Andor did a good job of showing the systemic repression and the agonizing choices the resistance had to make to survive.
We need more gray areas in our stories.
What about the Maquis? That’s another side to a resistance. Most times resistance movements accomplish exactly nothing and everyone would have been better off if they just worked with the existing government to improve things. Sometimes it’s just about egos and personal vendettas more than they are about any kind of cause. A lot of people die for nothing.
Other than the Maquis, we mostly tell the stories about resistances that were successful. This serves to romanticize the idea of a resistance and makes people feel that victory for a resistance is inevitable. It’s not. Most of the time it’s just causing death and destruction so that a few resistance leaders can have power over people before the resistance movement fades out.
Nearly every resistance movement ever has been pushed by outside actors. It’s extremely rare for these outside actors to have the best interests of the people they’re supposedly supporting. Countries don’t have friends, they have interests. This aspect of a resistance is rarely portrayed in fiction too.
While I do generally agree there are times when working with the government isn’t possible, much like with what’s happening in Israel. Israel has shown they’re not gonna make things better unless they’re forced to. Sure you can argue the resistance isn’t gonna work and is just a way for the leaders to have power but that doesn’t mean resisting in general isn’t justified. Even if resistance is futile it doesn’t mean that trying to resist is bad.
Israel’s primary motive has always been the safety of their people. Currently there’s Israelis being held against their will in Gaza.
It’s not really all that complicated really. Biden is doing his best to get Hamas to release the hostages, but Hamas just isn’t doing that. Israel isn’t going to just say “I guess it’s fine for Hamas to do whatever they want with our people”.
With the Palestinian resistance, it’s a “you either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain” kind of thing. If land was taken from you, sure the people that took it from you have done you wrong. But if you’re using violence because to restore the ethnic makeup to how it was in a history book, then you’re a fascists. Over time it has changed from the first to the latter. They should’ve taken taken the deal offered in the 1990s but they chose to continue using violence instead. So now if there ever is a Palestinian state it will be much worse off than it would’ve been had there not been a resistance. People could be living good lives, their families would be safe living in a Palestinian state if not for this romanticized resistance. As the resistance continues a potential future Palestinian becomes more and more diminished.
This is the problem with the romantization of resistance, and war in general. We have a strange respect for Germans who fought to the bitter end in WWII and we don’t respect Italian soldiers who surrendered at first contact with the enemy. Personally I respect Italians who refused to fight for Mussolini over the Germans who fought to the bitter end for Hitler. Similarly I also don’t respect people who fight for the authoritarian Hamas who are only hurting the Palestinian people.
The world would be a better place if we didn’t romanticize using violence for lost causes under authoritarian leaders.
I’m not arguing that Israel should just sit down and let them do whatever they want. I’m just saying that resistance is justified when it’s clear all the other side wants to do is take your home and push you and your people out. Israel is ultimately responsible for giving evil groups like Hamas support as it’s hard for Palestinians to care about their beliefs when the other side is indiscriminately killing your people and trying to either push you out or treat you as a second class citizen. All they see is a group that is trying to fight against the people doing that so they support it. Cause the only other option is to lay down and get bulldozed by Israel. Without fighting Israel has no reason to care or negotiate, and even with fighting they barely have a reason to care with all the support they get from the western world.
Also it’s pretty clear they don’t really care about the safety of their people. See all the protests against how the government is handling the situation in Israel and the fact that their indiscriminate fighting against Hamas has killed many of the hostages they’re trying to save. It’s just an excuse to expand their control and get rid of more of the Palestinians from the region.
I do agree that the goals of getting rid of Jews from the region are terrible and not possible but the solution isn’t to let them keep pushing the Palestinians out more and more. That would be like saying during the time of manifest destiny well it’s impossible to give the native Americans all their land back cause we live here now so they should stop fighting back and let us take more of their land.
Do you think Palestinians are animals? You’re talking as if Palestinians aren’t responsible for their actions and aren’t capable of making rational decisions. So it seems to me that you think Palestinians are animals and no one should expect them to act like civilized people.
And that’s where we disagree. I think Palestinians are people and therefore are responsible for their actions. What Hamas did on October 7 was a decision they made. They are responsible for that decision. They should face justice for what they did just as any other people in the world would. Because they aren’t animals, they are people that committed a horrible crime.
Ideally the Palestinian people would turn on Hamas and send the leaders of Hamas to either Israel (or the ICJ if they’re capable of considering Palestinians as humans that are responsible for their actions) to face justice for the crimes they committed. But they aren’t doing that. That is a decision they are making. Because they are people making decisions, not animals.
Because of the inability (or unwillgness) of the Palestions to remove Hamas from power, military action is required. At the very least to get the hostages out. Ideally to bring the leadership of Hamas to justice if that’s possible.
I think because you’re thinking of Palestinians as animals that aren’t capable of making decisions and therefore aren’t responsible for their actions you can’t understand the magnitude of the crimes Hamas has committed.
Please make more of an effort to think of Palestinians as people that are responsible for their actions, ok?
No I’m just saying that Israel is more responsible for Hamas than the Palestinians. If Israel wanted to they could stop their oppressive programs and the expansion of their state through settlers. They could take more care when trying to fight Hamas which it’s pretty clear they don’t right now with the number of civilian deaths and massacres that have happened. You’re trying to say instead of resisting that they should try to negotiate, but without the threat of violent resistance if the negotiations don’t go through then what reason does Israel have to negotiate? If there’s no resistance they can just ignore the Palestinians attempts to negotiate or stall them indefinitely while they continue to push them out of their homes. And yes Hamas is bad and them winning wouldn’t be a good thing but it’s understandable why Palestinians would support them when the only other option is to lay down and die. And yes their resistance is probably not gonna stop Israel in the long run, only international pressure and sanctions on Israel would actually get them to stop the terrible things they’re doing. But that doesn’t mean trying to resist is bad cause again the only other option is to lay down and let the Israel state bulldozer over you and your people.
Also though the idea that any resistance is just good people forced to make difficult choices that upset them is crazy - a lot of ‘resistance movements’ are brutal and cruel because that’s what they belive in, Lord’s Resistance Army is a resistance movement against the powerful and so they say evil government - their leader Kony is not a heroic movie character.
Even if like many here you hate Isreal it’s still very difficult to ignore the evils hamas have committed, certainly their leader living in Qatar is not luke Skywalker or Morphius, he’s an awful person who believes awful things.
Yeah that’s definitely not something that’s shown as much in media. The fact that usually resistance groups that do well tend to be the more extreme ones. Probably because of their beliefs they’re willing to fight back in ways other groups wouldn’t which limits those other groups’ effectiveness. And then because the more extreme groups are seen as more effective at resisting the occupying power they end up getting more support from the people than more moderate groups.
But at least in the case of Israel part of the reason Hamas is able to have so much support from the people and power is Israel’s fault for all the terrible things they’ve done to the Palestinians. In media when the evil government does evil things the resistance gains support and the same things happens in real life even if the resistance is also doing terrible things. They’re seen as at least better than the oppressors who are actively killing their friends and families.