You mention marxism earlier, but this is a very moralizing framing. Yes, the Palestinian people, including the membership of Hamas, has been brutally victimized past most living memory. There is no contradiction in being both a victim and – to a lesser extent that we should not allow to eclipse our view of the former – a perpetrator. If there was a breakout from Dachau and the people breaking out deliberately executed children in the later stages of their short-lived freedom, they have committed a crime. That doesn’t mean we condemn even that specific group as people who should be left in the camps, or even that the project they were engaging in was a bad thing overall, it just means that there were also misdeeds involved.
The opposition to the idea that people need to be perfect victims to deserve support does not need to produce the inverted extreme in which we must take victims as being perfect by merit of being victims. No, they don’t deserve their victimhood and they should be supported in their fight, but that doesn’t mean they get some kind of blank check that every individual action in that process is to be regarded as justified. You’re seriously going to talk yourself into Gonzalo-style terrorism with this set of assumptions.
i said i was done with this conversation but you made a lot of unfair assumptions about me and my views so let me say it like this;
the entire framing of “war crimes on october 7th” is ridiculous and it has absolutely nothing with my supposed rejection of the “perfect victim” narrative. it has to do with the entire framework of calling something a war crime being completely fake. the laws to punish “war crimes” do not apply to israel, the US, or their allies. israel’s existence is a war crime. what israel has been doing for 80 years is a war crime. october 6th was a war crime. october 5th was a war crime. i will not condemn the actions of people living in those conditions under western settler colonialism with the frame work those very nations dont apply to themselves. the entire discussion only goes to serve the us and israel in their genocide.
hamas is not at war with “israel”, they’re defending themselves from violent invaders who view them as subhuman and treat them as such. they can not commit a “war crime” as defined by western powers who are themselves committing war crimes and worse with impunity while crying “war crimes”
You said you were done, I didn’t say I was. If you’re done, don’t respond.
the laws to punish “war crimes” do not apply to israel, the US, or their allies. israel’s existence is a war crime. what israel has been doing for 80 years is a war crime. october 6th was a war crime. october 5th was a war crime.
This is all true and also completely irrelevant to the point of contention, not to mention that Israel probably did more war crimes on October 7th than Hamas, as I alluded to before. That fact is also irrelevant on any level but trying to communicate with each other diplomatically, though at this point I am just saying it for the sake of completeness.
i will not condemn the actions of people living in those conditions under western settler colonialism with the frame work those very nations dont apply to themselves. . . . they can not commit a “war crime” as defined by western powers who are themselves committing war crimes and worse with impunity while crying “war crimes”
You’re just pointing to hypocrisy as though the guilt of Israel, the US, and the rest of the western edifice overwrites the rest of reality. It does not.
hamas is not at war with “israel”, they’re defending themselves from violent invaders who view them as subhuman and treat them as such.
Here’s the issue, people characterizing the overall Israel/Gaza situation as a “war” are doing genocide apologia because Israel is targeting civilians with no military value to exterminate the Palestinian population, and these are being counted like war deaths or collateral damage when they obviously are not. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a war going on between Hamas and Israel, one where Hamas is defending and Israel is invading. An invasion is still a war if the invading force meets with military resistance. There are just other things going on beside the war, i.e. the bulk of the actual genocide/ethnic cleansing campaign.
The Soviets were also facing extermination, and probably over 10 million people were killed in genocide (ignoring combat deaths and similar, despite the Nazis being at fault for those as well) as part of Generalplan Ost. The Great Patriotic War was an invasion of the Soviet Union and it was, in fact, a war, and I don’t think that most of Hamas would deny to you that there is a war happening because that’s what happens when two militaries are trying to kill each other, regardless of the moral asymmetry of their positions or whatever else you want to throw in.
The Soviets also committed war crimes. This got exaggerated to make them brutal asiatic hordes in the eyes of white society, first by the Nazis and then in crypto-fascist western historiography. There are many misrepresentations, such as the idea that high command had anything but the utmost hostility toward sexual violence that occurred during the occupations (incidentally we have no first-hand account, forensic evidence, or pictures or video indicating that any sexual violence occurred during the day of October 7th, aside from one claim that Israeli courts themselves rejected, but that’s tangential). The Soviets also, though they committed war crimes, did so at an incomparably lower rate than the Nazis, and probably at a lower – or at worst only comparable – rate to the western Allies. There are many Germans who fully got away with what they did, but Red Army soldiers generally did not unless it was something benign like summarily executing a Nazi officer (or Katyn, I guess, but I don’t think either of us want to get into that).
None of this changes that parts of the Red Army and the general Soviet apparatus did do war crimes, something they themselves partially acknowledge, just as Hamas during negotiations acknowledged the problem of members committing war crimes on October 7th and offering to submit them to court if Israel could conceive of any action toward Gaza other than ceaseless slaughter (it could not).
It would be deeply unreasonable to suggest any sort of blanket condemnation of the Soviets in WWII, just like it would be deeply unreasonable to suggest any sort of blanket condemnation of Hamas in their long war of liberation against Israel. I support both and view their opponents as monstrosities that need to be wiped from the face of the Earth. That does not mean that defensive forces can do no wrong, as much as you are trying to make it so for Hamas with moralizing nonsense that you only double down on as you accuse me of being unfair in how I represent you.
You mention marxism earlier, but this is a very moralizing framing. Yes, the Palestinian people, including the membership of Hamas, has been brutally victimized past most living memory. There is no contradiction in being both a victim and – to a lesser extent that we should not allow to eclipse our view of the former – a perpetrator. If there was a breakout from Dachau and the people breaking out deliberately executed children in the later stages of their short-lived freedom, they have committed a crime. That doesn’t mean we condemn even that specific group as people who should be left in the camps, or even that the project they were engaging in was a bad thing overall, it just means that there were also misdeeds involved.
The opposition to the idea that people need to be perfect victims to deserve support does not need to produce the inverted extreme in which we must take victims as being perfect by merit of being victims. No, they don’t deserve their victimhood and they should be supported in their fight, but that doesn’t mean they get some kind of blank check that every individual action in that process is to be regarded as justified. You’re seriously going to talk yourself into Gonzalo-style terrorism with this set of assumptions.
i said i was done with this conversation but you made a lot of unfair assumptions about me and my views so let me say it like this;
the entire framing of “war crimes on october 7th” is ridiculous and it has absolutely nothing with my supposed rejection of the “perfect victim” narrative. it has to do with the entire framework of calling something a war crime being completely fake. the laws to punish “war crimes” do not apply to israel, the US, or their allies. israel’s existence is a war crime. what israel has been doing for 80 years is a war crime. october 6th was a war crime. october 5th was a war crime. i will not condemn the actions of people living in those conditions under western settler colonialism with the frame work those very nations dont apply to themselves. the entire discussion only goes to serve the us and israel in their genocide.
hamas is not at war with “israel”, they’re defending themselves from violent invaders who view them as subhuman and treat them as such. they can not commit a “war crime” as defined by western powers who are themselves committing war crimes and worse with impunity while crying “war crimes”
fuck all that.
You said you were done, I didn’t say I was. If you’re done, don’t respond.
This is all true and also completely irrelevant to the point of contention, not to mention that Israel probably did more war crimes on October 7th than Hamas, as I alluded to before. That fact is also irrelevant on any level but trying to communicate with each other diplomatically, though at this point I am just saying it for the sake of completeness.
You’re just pointing to hypocrisy as though the guilt of Israel, the US, and the rest of the western edifice overwrites the rest of reality. It does not.
Here’s the issue, people characterizing the overall Israel/Gaza situation as a “war” are doing genocide apologia because Israel is targeting civilians with no military value to exterminate the Palestinian population, and these are being counted like war deaths or collateral damage when they obviously are not. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a war going on between Hamas and Israel, one where Hamas is defending and Israel is invading. An invasion is still a war if the invading force meets with military resistance. There are just other things going on beside the war, i.e. the bulk of the actual genocide/ethnic cleansing campaign.
The Soviets were also facing extermination, and probably over 10 million people were killed in genocide (ignoring combat deaths and similar, despite the Nazis being at fault for those as well) as part of Generalplan Ost. The Great Patriotic War was an invasion of the Soviet Union and it was, in fact, a war, and I don’t think that most of Hamas would deny to you that there is a war happening because that’s what happens when two militaries are trying to kill each other, regardless of the moral asymmetry of their positions or whatever else you want to throw in.
The Soviets also committed war crimes. This got exaggerated to make them brutal asiatic hordes in the eyes of white society, first by the Nazis and then in crypto-fascist western historiography. There are many misrepresentations, such as the idea that high command had anything but the utmost hostility toward sexual violence that occurred during the occupations (incidentally we have no first-hand account, forensic evidence, or pictures or video indicating that any sexual violence occurred during the day of October 7th, aside from one claim that Israeli courts themselves rejected, but that’s tangential). The Soviets also, though they committed war crimes, did so at an incomparably lower rate than the Nazis, and probably at a lower – or at worst only comparable – rate to the western Allies. There are many Germans who fully got away with what they did, but Red Army soldiers generally did not unless it was something benign like summarily executing a Nazi officer (or Katyn, I guess, but I don’t think either of us want to get into that).
None of this changes that parts of the Red Army and the general Soviet apparatus did do war crimes, something they themselves partially acknowledge, just as Hamas during negotiations acknowledged the problem of members committing war crimes on October 7th and offering to submit them to court if Israel could conceive of any action toward Gaza other than ceaseless slaughter (it could not).
It would be deeply unreasonable to suggest any sort of blanket condemnation of the Soviets in WWII, just like it would be deeply unreasonable to suggest any sort of blanket condemnation of Hamas in their long war of liberation against Israel. I support both and view their opponents as monstrosities that need to be wiped from the face of the Earth. That does not mean that defensive forces can do no wrong, as much as you are trying to make it so for Hamas with moralizing nonsense that you only double down on as you accuse me of being unfair in how I represent you.