LogFAQs > #976614575

AdviceMan posted...

This conflict has been going on so long because it is a nuanced conflict. If it was easy to solve, it likely would have been solved, but it is not, so it continues.

The nuances make it difficult to completely solve, but there's a substantial amount of middle ground between where it is now and a complete solution, and you don't need to deal with much nuance to find it. If the dominant power (currently Israel) were focused on peacekeeping and mediation instead of self-serving subjugation and genocide, conditions would be significantly better for Palestinians and Hamas wouldn't be able to gain nearly as much traction among them, cutting down both their membership and the number of Palestinians willing to shelter/tolerate them. The problem won't completely go away because of the core ideological conflict and the difficulties of stamping out tiny pockets of insurgency, but a very substantial portion of the suffering can be placed on Israel's shoulders for their refusal to use their current position of power to improve the situation.

Basically, Israel has the power to make things significantly better, and they're choosing not to. That's something they need to be held accountable for. Holding Israel accountable for that also does not in any way preclude holding Hamas accountable for executing babies, as much as people seem bent on believing that saying "Israel is bad" means saying "Hamas is good."

AdviceMan posted...

the civilians aren't the people that caused this problem.

This is a very dangerous road to go down, so I don't plan on pursuing it too much further, but it is worth noting that Netenyahu has been democratically elected by Israeli civilians that would rather see Palestine wiped out than do anything to constructively solve the problems. If memory serves, Netenyahu has made several moves to make it harder to vote him out, and it's likely enough that most Israeli voters didn't actually choose this outcome that genuinely and collectively pinning the blame on them for it isn't altogether sensible, but I still feel like there's room to hesitate before completely removing all blame for the situation from Israeli citizens. In a democracy, political will involves more than just the decisions of leadership.

Of course, that's largely an academic distinction and doesn't mean that any of those voters deserve to have Hamas behead their babies. I'm saying this more as a matter of saying that they have the power to do something to fix the situation, which their voting choices to date haven't necessarily done. That's something they should keep in mind moving forward. Even more broadly than that, as voters in countries that are lending support to Israel, we have some power to effect positive change as well by voting for support that's contingent on more of a peacekeeping approach instead of this retaliatory one. This isn't a problem that's strictly isolated to one government and one terrorist organization. Many, many other people have some potential to influence it.