Paul Cantrell
There’s a cognitive shortcut we humans all seem to fall into using — culture? human nature? — that runs something like this:
- There are good guys and bad guys; this is characteristic of a person, not an action.
- Nations are people, and as such are possessed of a single mind, personality, and moral status.
Both of these shortcuts are false, but we lean on them.
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Paul Cantrell
These shortcuts serve us especially poorly right now wrt Israel and Palestine. In particular, they obscure the straightforward truth:
Antisemitism is on the rise. It has horrific historical precedent. Everyone deserves protection from such horrors. Hamas committed such horrors in October. The Likud government is currently committing such horrors, at massive scale.
No contradiction there. But if you think nations are people and people are either good guys or bad guys, it’s incomprehensible.
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Paul Cantrell
These shortcuts also obscure a subtler point I keep making:
We should view Likud and Hamas as •allies• inasmuch as these are both groups united by the a genocidal goal, and both need every path to peace off the table in pursuit of that goal. Both parties need atrocities to justify atrocities. Atrocities by either group thus work in favor of the interests of both.
Keep that in mind. Nations aren’t people. Factions and coalitions can cross national boundaries.
/end
Gabriel Pettier
@inthehands i have coworker/friend who is from syria, and i think i managed to get that point accross to her, especially how useful hamas was to the likud and anyone who doesn't want peace (unless it's from total domination/destruction of the other), but it's certainly not easy for one to overcome the prejudice against the other side and accept that the ostensible enemy of your enemy is not your friend.
Paul Cantrell
@tshirtman I mean, this isn’t just some abstract observation; Netanyahu propped up Hamas with Qatari cash as a deliberate strategy:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/
Paul Cantrell
@tshirtman Thanks for doing that work. Every bit counts.
Gabriel Pettier
@inthehands yeah, i know about that, she didn't, i did send her similar resources.
The idea that israel helped hamas become what it is, if not create it, definitely had an effect.
The idea that "hamas = freedom fighters, fatah = the worst corrupted entity possible" was deeply entrenched before that.
Paul Cantrell
@geonz Ah, but mercy and human caring are in abundant supply. Truly. That’s why the likes of Likud and Hamas and Trump and Putin have to form these powerful coalitions against them.
cognitively accessible math
@inthehands You. are. so. right. I despair when people expect mercy of any kind. Oh, and we need to keep the arms folks in business.
Paul Cantrell
@nomi Not precisely, but closely related. See also research on how people tend to see positives as personality traits but negatives as situation for ingroup, and the effect switches for outgroup
Nomi
@inthehands
You might be thinking of a phenomenon called The Fundamental Attribution Error
Paul Cantrell
@AnarchoDoggo Yes, multiple Israeli officials in the current government have explicitly stated genocidal intent.
So have Hamas officials. This was not a difficult web search: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calls_for_the_destruction_of_Israel#Hamas
I don’t know why you’re trying to put this asterisk next to Hamas. It doesn’t hold up, except through the lens of Hamas’s own PR. But see what you want to see, I guess.
Anarcho Doggo
@inthehands this is a really ignorant take that ignores historical context and what these groups are literally saying.
Israelis in positions of power are committing genocide and unabashedly saying so (one of countless examples: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/israeli-official-gaza-flattened-auschwitz_n_658092fee4b036ecab461ec1)
Hamas lacks the capacity and has stated very different goals
This is not remotely a defense of certain Hamas members killing civilians or taking civilians hostages. But their intention for the latter was to free Palestinians prisoners (not to eradicate a religious / ethnic group).
You are completely flattening context and the number of desperate Palestinians who join Hamas because it is the most well-established resistance faction. There is not uniformity in values there (unlike Netanyahu's regime which is ruthlessly unified in wiping out Palestinians and expanding Israeli displacement of the indigenous people).
You don't have to agree with Hamas leadership to avoid making baseless comparisons that misrepresent reality.
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