A pro-Palestinian rally Sunday in Times Square endorsed by the city chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America ensnared prominent party members amid widespread condemnation of the event.

Gov. Kathy Hochul and other leading Democrats blasted the rally as “abhorrent and morally repugnant” and drew a dividing line with far-left members of the party — including New York Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman, who denounced the attacks and called for a ceasefire but didn’t take a stand on the rally.

“I condemn Hamas’ attack in the strongest possible terms,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a statement. “No child and family should ever endure this kind of violence and fear, and this violence will not solve the ongoing oppression and occupation in the region. An immediate ceasefire and de-escalation is urgently needed to save lives.”

101 points

Very telling that people seem to confuse terrorists mass-murdering civilians with the struggle of the Palestinian people.

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51 points

Yep and not wanting Palestinians to die anymore means you hate the Jews. The gaslight is spooky.

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2 points

I agree with the statement that you are making, but, if I may be pedantic for just a moment, the way that your example was worded is not an example of gaslighting; it is actually an example of something called “affirming the disjunct”.

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2 points
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I appreciate the identification of the fallacy.

That said, the use of fallacious arguments is the tool by which one gaslights. They aren’t mutually exclusive.

When you use fallacies intentionally to convince someone that their basic and true point is wrong… That’s a form of gaslight.

The term doesn’t need to only apply to relationships. Political gaslights have become increasingly prevalent through social media.

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-8 points
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I mean they’re the same. Israel created a situation where the only way to struggle against oppression is to mass-murder civilians, so naturally civilians are being mass-murdered.

Edit: Obligatory I don’t support the mass-murder of civilians.

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3 points

Yeah, I mean killing Jewish civilians is the only way! Palestinians have been doing it for decades, and it hasn’t ever worked, but it’s the only way!

They’ve tried nothing else, but this is the only way!

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7 points
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They’ve tried nothing else, but this is the only way!

Tell me you know nothing about Palestine without telling me you know nothing about Palestine.

You might wanna look up the Oslo peace process (which, by the way, came after the first intifada).

I mean Israel funded Hamas specifically to weaken the PLO; they’ve proven time and time again that they don’t want peace.

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-7 points

Is that accurate in Gaza? Gaza has the 1967 borders, broad fiscal and in kind aid built in. Political autonomy, a foreign, non-Israeli border and zero settlements with existing settlers being forced at gunpoint to leave almost 20 years ago.

Gaza could easily “struggle” by building an actual democratic society, wealthy enough to fund a legitimate war against Israel. Instead it chooses to fund it’s multimillionaire leaders and their foreign mansions and spend whatever it can on weapons of war and enslaving it’s neighbors.

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10 points
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Political autonomy, a foreign, non-Israeli border and zero settlements with existing settlers being forced at gunpoint to leave almost 20 years ago.

They’re also subjected to a blockade that’s turning the country into an open-air prison.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip#Limitation_of_basic_goods

There’s more reasons for Gazans to fight Israel, but the elephant in the room is the blockade. It’s legitimately impossible to build a functional state under these conditions no matter how much democracy you have (though the lack of democracy probably isn’t helping).

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2 points
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16 points

What’s awful is you see this both with people who dislike Hamas, and with people who support the Palestinians. There’s plenty of “um actually” folks I’ve seen on Lemmy who are putting Hamas in a sympathetic light under the guise of Palestinian liberation. And you need not look far to find people who lump all Palestinians together with those terrorists.

The rally was well intentioned, I hope, but horribly tone deaf. It would’ve been better to recast it as support for Palestinians and Israeli civilians, given current events, and condemned Hamas for hurting both.

I hate how often nuance is lost, and that you have to very loudly point out the nuance to make sure it’s clear, but that’s the world we live in. This rally failed to do that.

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4 points

The rally is exactly what Hamas wants. It’s the reason they use human shields.

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1 point

Agreed actually. It benefits them but hurts Palestinians for the two to be conflated.

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40 points
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This. I’m against Hamas, and I’m also against the current government of Israel. I’m at a point of only caring for civilians of Israel and Palestine after reading up on the history of the conflict. Any one else? They’re part of the problem.

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26 points

Israel’s right-wing government is becoming anti-democratic, and their position on settlements is antagonistic.

But Hamas is pro-genocide, happily murders Jewish children, and use their own children as meat shields.

It bothers me that people equate these two.

They aren’t the same.

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12 points

Sure, we can accept that they’re not the same. At the same time, no one should support either of them.

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37 points

The israeli government also has killed a shit ton of people. There’s two villains here and one huge and persistent, the other is resourceful and brutal. They aren’t the same but the media is insistent on portraying Hamas as the sole villain here and people are rightful to push back on that narrative.

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0 points

It makes zero sense to compare the violence of the occupied with the violence of the occupiers. How many Israelis settled in Palestine because they moved from cities like New York? Do they really have equal share in the conflict when they moved from a place like America to steal land from an olive farmer whose family has been there for thousands of years.

Many people didn’t choose to be born in both regions, and many civilians who don’t hold those shitty ideals are dead that don’t deserve to be. But if there never will be peace, and one group should go to establish peace. It certainly should be the occupiers

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2 points
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You mean like how people confuse Israelis with their government? Both are wrong.

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-40 points
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I’m an AOC fan but calling on Israel to deescalate is just insane right now.

That would be like some county asking the US to deescalate the day after the 9/11 attacks.

What? No. Hamas needs to be stamped out.

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88 points

That would be like some county asking the US to deescalate the day after the 9/11 attacks.

Yeah and our escalation really improved things, didn’t it?

What Israel is going to do is mount a full scale invasion of Gaza and they’re going to be even more heavy handed than usual. Tens of thousands of innocent people are going to die, that don’t have to die.

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-4 points

Hamas should have considered that before massacring hundreds of citizens, but it’s never once cared about actually achieving peace.

Its founding document literally calls for the complete eradication of all Jews from the land.

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20 points

And vice versa

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36 points

And its leaders don’t care about the Palestinian people. They live safely (and very comfortably) in other countries. If Palestinians get killed by Israelis, Hamas leaders will just see it as a way to advocate for more violence against Jews.

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13 points

Hamas is an ugly outgrowth of Israeli oppression and was supported initially by Israel. The problem is that the side with all the power, Israel, doesn’t want justice. Only when that changes will peace come

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4 points

The solution here is to destroy all of Hamas and the IDF.

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4 points

Israel literally just published a map with no Palestine, and said “Palestinians don’t exist”.

Difference being, Israel is the occupier saying this shit, and Palestinians have been occupied for decades.

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-1 points
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0 points

I mean Hamas had some really good PR going but they really, really fucked up this time.

Many countries now withdrawing aid, most are reluctantly supporting Israel because most countries despite being just as guilty as Israel, know that Israel is the West’s proxy in the middle east.

The blood of both Palestinian civilians and Israeli civilians, and the imminent occupation of the region is going to be on their hands.

I don’t know what they’re smoking.

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-6 points

Yeah and our escalation really improved things, didn’t it?

Essentially yes. “Making an example” out of Afghanistan and Iraq made the militaries of the Middle East crack down on official support of terrorist cells in their countries.

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7 points

Yeah, literally all of them did that, and were correct to do so. That it made little difference doesn’t matter, just as it won’t matter in this case.

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8 points

You don’t just stamp out a terrorist organization like Hamas. Not without wiping out an entire people.

Not saying Bibi isn’t planning to do just that… but that doesn’t make it justified.

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-2 points
19 points

So the good guys kill civilians, including the elderly and children, and that’s justified because Israel did things that were wrong?

Hamas aren’t the good guys here. If they targeted military areas, I’d agree that this was a legitimate reply to Israeli violence. However, targeting innocent citizens - especially in the brutal way that they did - removes any semblance of high ground that they might have.

Now, this isn’t to say that the Israeli government are the good guys either. They’ve done many things that obviously shouldn’t have been done. Some were in reply to attacks. Some provoked attacks.

There’s plenty of blame to go around for the general situation and the solution to this isn’t going to be easy. But saying “well, the Israeli government did X so killing Israeli civilians was justified” is totally wrong.

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-2 points

Nope, I never said that. I simply said that Hamas is not the bad guys. What I’m saying is that this idea that there is a binary of “good guys” and “bad guys” is a bullshit narrative believed by naive people that only read propaganda like this story.

For what it’s worth, Israel specifically targets land with civilians on it that they want to settle, blow it up, then claim boogie man “Hamas” did it. They’ve been doing it for DECADES. We’re talking occupied apartment buildings, hospitals, schools…and somehow it never gets covered by the western media. Go look at death and injury statistics for the area. Even western sources will tell you that the Israeli forces are way more brutal than Hamas could ever hope to be.

This isn’t a big surprise to anybody who has observed this conflict for more than a single news cycle.

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6 points

regarding your previous statements about the terror group hamas, you do not, under any circumstances “gotta hand it to them”

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-1 points

What the actual bell are you talking about?

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1 point

And, per capita, the death toll in Israel would be equivalent to an attack on the US causing 25,000 deaths. Imagine if someone attacked the United States and 25,000 people died. Would we be showing restraint?

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4 points

It hasn’t worked the last 999 times it was tried but surely this time will be different

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13 points

Israel supported Hamas to displace the PLO and their continued existence is very useful foe the Israeli far right.

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-27 points
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0 points
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14 points

Threads like this always blow my mind. People supporting Hamas here, you realize they’re the same as Isis right?

They’re literally dragging women thru the streets raping them, while people stand by and cheer. They’re targeting women and children in the streets, non combatants. They’re taking hostages as human shields and bragging about it.

Can people really support this? I can’t support many of the actions of the Israeli government, but this is quite clearly not a case of both sides being the same and Hamas is the one making that abundantly clear with their horrific actions.

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25 points

And you can support the plight of the Palestinians without supporting Hamas. The Palestinians elected Hamas in 2006, but since then Hamas has cancelled elections.

Imagine if Trump decided to cancel the 2020 elections (he wouldn’t have the power to do so under our political system, but just assume he found a way). Would the fact that he was elected in 2016 mean that he was still the legitimate political leader in 2023 having cancelled elections? Of course not.

Hamas’ leaders live in luxury outside of the Israel/Gaza Strip/West Bank area. (I believe they’re in Qatar.) They don’t care if the Palestinian people suffer and die as long as they can blame it on the Israelis and spin it into more attacks on Israel.

Hamas needs to go not just for Israel’s sake, but for the sake of the Palestinian people.

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-7 points

I’ll agree with you while pointing out that Hamas has over 75% approval ratings in the strip.

People are in the streets cheering for the rape and murder of hostages. Not a few people, thousands of them.

Don’t ignore this reality when forming your thoughts.

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10 points

Where did you get the 75%?

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-4 points
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Pretty fucking rich for a terrorist organization that will summarily execute those in its territory that don’t support it. Maybe you shouldn’t ignore that insane batshit crazy reality when forming your absurd psychotic thoughts.

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-3 points
-1 points

I’m not finding women being raped in the streets there? I’m not finding kids being gunned down in the streets, can you show me where the Israelis did that here?

They are not nearly the same even with your false equivalence.

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-1 points

Yes I can show u how theyve killed kids and entire families killed and their homes destroyed and land taken. Google Israeli soldier murders and see what u get.

Are u really trying to argue Israel is the good guy here? Lol

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0 points

The West Bank isn’t attacking Israel, Gaza is. There’s no Jewish settlers in the Gaza strip.

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4 points

Yeah they’re terrorists, so is Israel. Difference is they were radicalized by Israel occupying their land for decades.

Palestinian children tortured, used as shields by Israel: U.N. | Reuters https://www.reuters.com/article/us-palestinian-israel-children/palestinian-children-tortured-used-as-shields-by-israel-u-n-idUSBRE95J0FR20130620

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5 points

That’s not the only difference. I distinctly don’t remember a time where Israeli soldiers dragged slaves through Tel Aviv to the cheers of a Jewish population.

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2 points

I don’t know of any “good actors” in Middle East politics. The state of Israel was basically founded on genocide:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestinian_expulsion_and_flight

In 1948 more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs – about half of prewar Palestine’s Arab population – fled from their homes or were expelled by Zionist militias,[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] during the 1948 Palestine war.[9] The exodus was a central component of the fracturing, dispossession and displacement of Palestinian society, known as the Nakba,[10][11] in which between 400 and 600 Palestinian villages were destroyed, village wells were poisoned in a biological warfare programme and properties were looted to prevent Palestinian refugees from returning

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-11 points
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