We’re a group of activists in a Western country where most have been brought up with either “Israel = good, Hamas = bad” or “It’s a sad, but unsolvable conflict between two equal sides”. The media heavily skewed to the Israeli perspective, and our politicians want to condemn protests in support of Palestinians. Therefore, unless you purposefully seek out information on what’s going on in Palestine, you won’t really encounter information about the occupation, the apartheid or the human rights violations. There are a lot of gaps in people’s information and understanding of the situation.
Atm there’s a lot of dehumanization, a lot of “Well, what can you do? Hamas keeps attacking Israel, what are they supposed to do?”. I think the Israel=Good is deep-rooted in a lot of westerners. I know it was in me.
We’ve asked ourselves and each other what finally broke through our previous perception, so we could see the inequality and realize that what’s happening is not right
One mentioned seeing a journalist in the back of an ambulance being handed a one-year-old that had passed
One mentioned seeing a video of a caring father saying goodbye to his little girl, kissing her eyes before she was wrapped in the materiale they wrap their dead. The father clearly in denial, smiling and wishing for her to wake up.
A big one for me was being told that it’s not an equal fight. It’s not two equally strong countries. It’s one country with a huge military, and another with barely any. Another was hearing about the human rights violations that’s been going on for decades - the fabricated water shortage, the children in Israeli jails.
I believe these are the moments we need to collect and present to those who are still wary on where they stand.
What broke through to you?
They’re officially declared a terrorist organisation in many places, and nobody argues with it (not unreasonably, but nobody’s going after the settlers for the same). They might be pulling forward a bit right now, but historically the Israeli lobby has been no joke in the West.
Plenty of people argue that Hamas is not a terrorist organization.
Israel is relatively popular in the US, but younger Americans and many circles within academia are rabid antizionists, as I think you’ve seen. Many are calling to “globalize the intifada.”
Hamas has not succeeded in making the average westerner think terrorism is good, but they have succeeded in normalizing terrorism, making more people think that “terrorism” is an Islamophobic term, making more people think that Israel does not have the right to exist, and emboldening antisemites on the right and left. Younger generations are more and more aggressively antizionist as time goes on.
Settler expansion is a problem that’s more complicated and less exciting to people than the war. It makes sense that antizionists want us to focus on the war and just use settler expansion for color.
This study from the GWU Program on Extremism is an important read on the topic of Hamas’s presence in the US over time.
Yeah, I can cherry-pick morons off the internet too. That was an approximate “nobody”, there are of course some voices at the fringe. I mostly agree with OP, I just thought that one bit was an odd take.
As for the rest, terrorist is a meaningless word for non-state actors we don’t like. Hamas is not bad because they’re terrorists, but because they’re theocrats that want to eliminate the neighboring ethnic group. They are not alone.