I didn’t want to direct this question to Americans specifically because, at this point, other countries have shown support to Israel in one or the other way. If my country was financing this, I would be taking the streets. Shit, I’m right now in the hospital but all I can think about is protesting anyway just to feel I did something to stop this madness.
Are you doing something about this? Are you feeling unsettled? How do you feel about all this mess?
EDIT: So, buying Chinese stuff takes the USS Gerald Ford to Gaza’s coast. Also, TIL that that chocolate my cousin gave me when she was 20 and I was 5, (delicious stuff!) made me a slavist-ish. The fact remains, this genocide is being paid and supported by taxpayers money; of course, I was hoping that most of us didn’t pay taxes wishing for this. Thank you all for your responses, some of them were hard to swallow.
My country has been voting to condemn Israel’s treatment of Palestine in the UN until 2022 but they will probably vote the same now. As far as I know my country doesn’t support Israel monetarily either so I’m pretty happy.
Defeated and hopeless mostly. Almost the same as I felt funding the war in the middle east after looking at the casualties and reading testimonies from US soldiers. It’s long weighed heavily on me that half of every dollar I’m required to pay to the government is used to kill people who have nothing to do with me, especially as someone whose worked since he was 16. The war in the middle east was met with the largest protests in US history at the time and nothing changed. We then elected a democrat who was given a noble peace prize, he kept the war going and killed many civilians with drone strikes. I don’t even own a house and the rate at which my savings are stacking up, there’s not much I can even afford to do. Welcome to the machine.
I feel that taking one side over the other without allowing for any nuance in that complicated clusterfuck over there is disingenuous. I feel very sorry for all civilians caught between the many murderous assholes in that region, but I can’t fully support one group while completely condemning the other. Acting like it’s a black and white issue is so very wrong and not helpful.
Which side is committing genocide? That’s the side to oppose in any fight.
But our government did pick a side. So what is our obligation, then?
In the US, speaking the truth about the Israel-Palestine ::cough::Palestinian genocide::cough:: war will get you cancelled by AIPAC astroturfers and useful idiots who just cancel who they’re told to cancel. That’s how they (the AIPAC, the military industrial complex, and AIPAC-run film industry…if you don’t believe me, why was Harvey Weinstein so friendly with ex-Mossad agents that he was able to use them against his opponents?) manufacture consent among normal people these days.
Additionally, 35 US states have anti-bds laws on the books punishing US citizens that choose not to buy products from Israel. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws In many of those US states you can be fired from government jobs for refusing to buy Israeli products in your own personal life.
Americans are the biggest donors, but Britain, Germany, and to a lesser extent Australia and Canada, and a handful of non-German EU countries also give Israel a lot of money.
I love genocide. I just wish there was some way I could actually vote for it. Instead I’m stuck voting for the closest option which does none of what I want but fortunately both sides support Israel killing Muslims in mass.
I’ll put this here because people are dumb as hell /s
I don’t mean to derail the conversation, but it pains me to say that Europeans have been financing the ethnic cleansing of Artsakh by buying Azerbaijani oil with almost no repercussion.
If my country was financing this, I would be taking the streets.
If I took to the streets over this, I would make protestors look bad because I have no experience, no social skills, no support network, and I’m a terrible rhetorician, especially when I am angry. Additionally, my family is fast to call the cops and has promised me that they would cooperate with the police if I ever got on their radar, so my presence would be a security culture issue.
Are you doing something about this?
Well, I have chosen not to work for companies that participate in such genocides, which is not a completely vacuous statement because they have sent me recruitment emails to design their fucking missiles! But frankly, I am fighting my own battles right now. I am desperately trying to find work. I am constantly fighting insurers to pay for the few times I ever muster up the courage to use my insurance. I am fighting my own goddamn family who will throw me to the fucking wolves if I can’t afford the rent. I am fighting the urge to walk off into the woods and fucking die of embarrassment at having accomplished so little at my age.
So no, I’m not really doing anything. I’ll cop to that. I’ve copped to worse, and at least for now I can live with being a hypocrite. Sorry if that’s unsatisfactory.
Are you feeling unsettled? How do you feel about all this mess?
I fucking HATE America, I fucking HATE world governments, and this just adds to the list of reasons why. Unsettled doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Call your congressperson and senators. They might not listen to just you but the more people call the more their positions can be moved.
I don’t like it one bit.
The government sees it as a strategic need to have a strong ally in the region. That view will not change, at least not anytime soon. The Pentagon considers it a national security issue, which puts it beyond politics. Unfortunately, I have to live with that.
Germany is bound to support them no matter what. I understand why but there should be some conditions. It’s a sensitive subject here.
Beyond that I don’t really understand this conflict enough to have an objective opinion.
I fell like most people have very little idea whats going on. The conflict is extremely complicated.
The conflict is extremely complicated.
It really isn’t. It’s just pro-Israeli propaganda pretending it’s complicated.
Israel is retaliating against civilians for an attack carried out by Hamas. This is what America did in Afghanistan after the attack on the world trade center in 2001. It was dumb and it’s dumb now.
I’d call it “retaliating” against civilians. Actual retaliation would mean hitting the set of people who attacked Israel.
IMO a big source of the problem is that we’re conflating four groups for two groups.
Government A, People A, Government B, People B.
Any time Government A attacks People B, Government B “retaliates” against People A, and vice versa. It’s not actual retaliation it’s forwarding the violence to someone new.
There are tenuous connections between these governments and these peoples, but it’s not like slapping the guy who just slapped you. It’s like slapping his kid.
That’s my emotional understanding of the current situation. I supported the invasion of Afghanistan whole-heartedly the night it happened, but I was a child then. 9/11 was upsetting and rockets are exciting. Now, with maturity and hindsight, that invasion was a cruel mistake. I believe this current invasion is also a mistake.
What I see critical about it is that they don’t realy give a fuck about civilians. They don’t target them, but if there a chance to hurt Hamas they don’t realy care that much. Still I realy don’t like the people who are just screaming at you everything bad. I don’t feel remotely qualified to talk specifics about that topic and most people I hear talking about it, especially in the internet are deffenetly not qualified either.
I think most people are qualified to say that killing is bad regardless of the reasons or intent. If the goal of Israel is to put a stop to Hamas attacks then they certainly aren’t going to get there by killing random Palestinians regardless. That is only going to create more people who hate Israel in the long run.
Similar to all other wars, shitty but numb to human greed, at times.
Best when brought up organically, but steering toward it may also happen.
Teaching/learning and talking to as many people about it IRL, while also trying and failing on the interwebs.
and supported by taxpayers money;
nah our national taxes don’t pay for anything, a sovereign government prints fiat money before anyone pays any tax and part of what gives that money any real value is that it’s accepted as payment for debts owed to that sovereign.
They print money for the government budget but that massively inflates the money supply so to counterbalance that inflation, they destroy all the money that was paid in taxes by their citizens
Taxpayer money funding government budget is fairly accurate
Taxpayer money funding government budget is fairly accurate
you can print money up to the natural resource+ labor output of a nation-state and nobody is printing that much money.
where did the 20,000 per person per year for all those years the US spent on its wars in iraq and afghanistan come from? it wasn’t tax revenue.
It wasn’t all tax revenue but taxes were definitely necessary for the US economy to not collapse while funding the war machine
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Leading question.
Edit: For an actual “answer”, some people are in fact taking it to the streets. For your favorite country you can search for it and if you don’t want to do that here’s an article for the US. While you may argue that we should’ve expected this, at the time of financing all we know is that there was a first strike and people were angry. Now it’s different, at least in my local circle.
Either way, this should not be a question for asklemmy. It should be in the politics community or something.
Loaded question.
rhetorical “question”
