So I actually deleted my post shortly after making it, but I guess I was too slow. I apologize for that, I didn't effectively make the point I wanted to.
Yeah, turns out maybe dragging people's sexuality into a political conversation to pit them against (other) brown people wasn't the best idea. Perhaps if you ever find yourself posting 'you post a lot in the LGBT thread' in this one, you should stop and think about it for a second first.
Look, nobody denies that Palestine and many other middle eastern countries have social problems. Where we don't agree is
why. The reality is decades of imperialist policies have left them extremely impoverished and subjected them to unimaginable state violence. This is extremely fertile ground for extremism of all varieties, including from the most oppressive and bigoted religious sects. It's unrealistic to expect progress on social issues when people need to worry about not getting bombed, or jailed without due process, or pushed off their lands, or simply having their voices silenced by a political system that's been entirely rigged against them.
Project 2025 should also sow some doubt in you whether or not the supposedly progressive, egalitarian U.S. is really all that far ahead. A significant portion of the people in it would seemingly love to adopt the same policies regarding LGBTQ+ people that you criticize Palestine for, so maybe we haven't won the social battle quite yet ourselves.
At the end of the day, we don't give people death sentences for being bigots, and even if Palestine is genuinely horrible to LGBTQ+ people, that's not a valid reason to genocide them. There
is no valid reason to genocide anyone, ever.
What I was really trying to get at is that (mostly) every single person here is posting on the internet from a safe Western nation with absolutely nothing at stake from this war at all. You aren't going to be forced from your home due to Hamas or Hezbollah rocket attacks nor are people you love going to be destroyed by Israeli warplanes. People here are going to comfortably pick their perceived moral high ground because you can do that and no matter what happens no negative effects of those things will hurt you.
Can you be a little more clear on what exactly your point is here? Because this just sounds like a call for apathy. I don't think anyone thinks that advocating for Palestine in this thread is going to like magically fix the situation or even really change much in the real world. The best we can hope for is to educate people on what's happening and maybe sow some seeds of doubt in the minds of those who are firmly in pro-Israel camps. I don't see why either of those things necessarily can't happen in this thread, although I agree that recent discussions are pretty terrible examples of that.
For example the October 7th attacks were pretty clearly an atrocity that should be condemned by any reasonable person. Despite this there are plenty of people, some in this thread, that consider these attacks valid as self defense. Okay well, more than half of Gaza has been destroyed in response to them and tens of thousands of people, mostly non-combatants, have been killed with many, many more wounded. Morality is basically irrelevant here because like it or not a unified Palestinian state isn't going to happen and armed resistance such as this just invites Israeli retaliation. Shooting up a music festival does not in any way put the Palestinian people in a better position than they were in a year ago.
Also yes Israel is a genocidal domicidal ethnostate with a history of human rights abuses and atrocities such as collective punishment, mass imprisonment, and limiting food / water that people can and have written books about. But Israel isn't going anywhere and no one is coming to rescue Palestine. Despite what half the people here are convinced of, no Israel isn't going to kill every man women and child in the Gaza strip. They are however going to continue to push Palestinians off their land, bulldoze houses, and treat the Palestinian people as second class sub-humans similar to the Native American genocide. Acts that are absolutely diabolical. But again, that doesn't mean every single act of violence committed by Hamas is valid or useful and suggesting from a computer chair that Palestinians fight for a unified homeland while Israel flattens the Gaza strip just reeks of Western privilege. It's entirely possible to condemn Israel's disgusting actions while also recognizing Hamas's actions aren't helping Palestine find a better future either.
I don't really like the 'pragmatic' framing here for the simple reason that we don't ever seem to offer any alternative. People in Western countries are fortunate enough to never have had to face an impossible choice between a slow death by colonialist subjugation or a, perhaps futile, armed struggle. I don't think we get to condemn people who are facing that choice, regardless of what they choose. We can talk about whether or not HAMAS's strategy is pragmatic (I would be inclined to largely agree with you, although I think we would still draw different conclusions from that fact) but in order to do so we need to actually drop the pretenses of moral arguments. That includes ditching morally charged language like 'terrorist'. Otherwise, pragmatism goes out the window because 'terrorism is never justified' etc., etc., etc. I also don't think refusing to 'condemn HAMAS' or whatever is the same thing as saying their actions are pragmatic; it isn't to me anyways. It's simply recognizing that it's hypocritical to focus on HAMAS when Israel is doing so much more material harm.
The important thing, though, is that in order for an argument to pragmatism to work, you need to offer them a more pragmatic alternative. I don't necessarily think rotting in an open-air prison forever is so obviously a better idea, but it also doesn't really matter what I think. It matters what the people of Palestine think, and armed struggle is for better or worse not nearly as unpopular an idea there as it is in the West. If we want this to change, we need to provide them with an alternative path to liberate themselves, and especially now so deep into this 'conflict', I don't think the Israeli state will ever do that.
You're right that it's easy enough for us to discuss these issues in a cold, detached manner from the safety of our Western privilege, but the problem is that also applies to you. It's easy enough to condemn their actions when you haven't lived through the experiences that informed them. I haven't lived through those experiences either, but I've at least listened to them enough to realize it isn't my place to condemn them. If we want a single leg to stand on to discuss the atrocities they might have committed in the process, we need to end the active genocide against them first, and we need to be impartial, which is going to mean being honest and just as scathing when examining the atrocities committed against them by the Israeli state. Otherwise there is no justice and there can be no lasting peace.
