Gaza and the Western Left Cosplayers
“I have some understanding of how if you live a brutalized and humiliated life as a young man in Gaza under siege you might come to be the kind of person who commits or celebrates the murder of women and children; I don’t understand how ‘radicals’ in the US end up there,” from journalist James Palmer.
And then there’s stuff like this, a song performed at a Palestinian wedding encouraging continued atrocities in Ukraine and for China to invade Taiwan, that prove statements like “oppressed peoples everywhere should stand together for liberation” are sophistic.
Israel’s hands are obviously not clean in Palestine, but the Western Left living in safe borders have really shown their ass the last few days cosplaying as ‘revolutionaries’ cheering on the murder of civilians and aligning with the geopolitical interests of states hostile to liberal society that allow them to enjoy the prosperity and protection to freely write hateful rhetoric from their expensive Macbook pros to score points supporting a cause and people they arguably barely understand and have no real stake in.
This groupthink valorization of and flattening of victimhood (and I’m going to take a wild guess that a significant number of Palestinians and the Arab world do not approve of Hamas) including arguably aligning with those who harbor beliefs abhorrent to your deepest values (Iran’s regime supports Hamas with weapons) shows how deeply segments of American society have become lost in dead end ideologies and lack understanding beyond our borders. This is not helpful.
I’m probably losing friends saying this, but it needed to be said. A lot people I know have been cheering on gunning down people at a music festival and women and children being kidnapped and calling it decolonization, it’s repugnant.
And I’ll end up with these quotes lifted from journalist Medhi Hasan and Professor Dov Waxman:
“This conflict for me has always been about morality.
Morally, you cannot justify the killing of Palestinian civilians, even if you say it’s fighting terrorism.
But morally, you also cannot justify the killing of Israeli civilians, even if you say you’re fighting occupation.”
“To the people celebrating the mass murder of Israeli civilians, you have lost your humanity. To the people enthusiastically calling for Israel to decimate Gaza, densely populated with 2 million Palestinian civilians, you have lost your humanity. Israelis and Palestinians are real people, just like you and me.”
