For a gay high schooler living in the U.S., it is with extreme difficulty that I watch the American and Israeli governments exploit my sexual identity to excuse ongoing ethnic cleansing....
My friend, maybe you should do some research before you make assertions so confidently, especially if you’re going to use those assertions to accuse others of being racists or ethnocentrists. I’d recommend the Wikipedia article called LGBT People and Islam, particularly the “History” section of the article. The TLDR is that homosexual practices were accepted and commonplace in the Muslim world during the Islamic Era, although their view of what homosexuality is would be considered lacking by modern standards. In fact, they were so damn gay that they wrote love poems to their male pages and Europeans made fun of them for it. Here’s a quote from Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World:
Whatever the legal strictures on sexual activity, the positive expression of male homoerotic sentiment in literature was accepted, and assiduously cultivated, from the late eighth century until modern times. First in Arabic, but later also in Persian, Turkish and Urdu, love poetry by men about boys more than competed with that about women, it overwhelmed it. Anecdotal literature reinforces this impression of general societal acceptance of the public celebration of male-male love (which hostile Western caricatures of Islamic societies in medieval and early modern times simply exaggerate).
That’s the thing, though-- military service is compulsory in Israel at the age of 18. There are certainly conscientious objectors who don’t serve, and the compulsory draft excludes some but not all women; but the line between civilian and soldier in Israel is blurry, not clear-cut like it is in countries without mandatory military service.
On the other hand, there is no compulsory military service in Palestine because the Oslo II accord does not allow Palestinians to have a standing army, air force, or navy.
The line is blurry for elderly people, too. Sam Colt made all people equal when it comes to capacity for personal violence.
I agree with you that killing young children is reprehensible, and I hope that consequences occur for each of the individuals responsible for the deaths of 36 Israeli children. I hold the same hopes for each of the individuals responsible for the deaths of over 10,000 Palestinian children.
I hope you’ll forgive me for giving most of my mental energy to the slaughter that is actively ongoing and much greater in scope.
I don’t know what you think “the cause” is, or what cover you think I’m giving to Israel or Hamas. Israel understands that might makes right and that no one will try to stop them because the US backs them. Hamas understands that you cannot “moral standing” your way out from under the thumb of an oppressor because if the oppressor believed in “moral standing” then they would not be an oppressor in the first place.
Morality is great, but material conditions do not care about your or my ideology.
Tbh, if you don’t want people to misunderstand the things you say, then you need to start saying things with your chest. Stop posting inscrutable and reactionary blandities and start posting clear and intelligible opinions supported by as many facts as you’re able to muster. Lemmy will be a better place if you do :)
The point that I’m trying to make is that your comments are so nonspecific that it is impossible to “educate you” for the same reasons that it is impossible to nail a cloud to a wall. For example, in your first comment, you say that it is “Interesting how you used Oslo II and not the failed camp David summit options that Israel tried” but you don’t explain why you think it’s interesting or why they failed or why you think they should have succeeded but didn’t or any other jumping off point to give others a chance to agree with you or rebut you. You just said something bland and vague and impossible to pin down. How could anyone possibly agree or disagree or even have a discussion about a statement as generic as “I find this interesting!”?
Ummm all I tried to say was that it’s unfair to use a temporary solution (Oslo II) as the metric
So say that with your chest! Say what you believe clearly and concisely exactly like you just did, explain why you believe what you do, and do it in a top-level comment without someone having to prompt you twice to do it. If you want bonus points, provide relevant citations for your claims.
That’s how you make your posts corporeal rather than cloudlike. You have to put yourself out there and make your position known, and if you’re going to do that then you might as well take the time to come correct
After 33 years and four children, Baby Boomers Marta and Octavian Dragos say they feel trapped in what was once their dream home in El Cerrito, California....
The reason they’ve earned some frustration is not because they bought a house in SoCal the 90s. The reason they’ve earned some frustration is because after living in a house in SoCal for 33 years and raising four children in it, they felt like they wouldn’t earn “enough” money from reselling it. This feeling of entitlement was so strong that they complained to an international news corporation about it.
Even if they didn’t create the unjust system, they clearly benefit from it and will do whatever it takes to get what they consider to be their piece of the pie. They want the real estate system to work as designed-- because how else would they get their money?
The thing that really gets me is that one of them is a retired teacher. He dedicated his life to helping young people. He’s got to be educated enough to do some self-reflection. But this mindset that he has about real estate and profit is destroying the world for the same exact people he’s worked so hard to help.
“The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.”
The duck said,
“There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”
Fair enough, I definitely need to work on not centering America in my view of the world, and a quick check of their comment history shows they’re from the UK
Why We Must Reject the Pinkwashing of Genocide in Gaza (www.commondreams.org)
For a gay high schooler living in the U.S., it is with extreme difficulty that I watch the American and Israeli governments exploit my sexual identity to excuse ongoing ethnic cleansing....
We live in a post information scarcity society and we still haven't moved on from capitalism.
Edit: Changed title to be more accurate....
"Noooo, us? No, we would NEVER do a genocide! Here, look at these testimonies from OUR experts! Ignore the UN, Amnesty, WHO, B'Tselem, Doctors Without Borders, and especially the PRCS" (i.imgflip.com)
We are a reality show for aliens... (lemmy.world)
Biden sanctions Israeli settlers over West Bank violence (www.bbc.com)
He signed an executive order on Thursday, saying violence had reached “intolerable levels”....
Boomers wanting to downsize face huge tax bills (www.cnn.com)
After 33 years and four children, Baby Boomers Marta and Octavian Dragos say they feel trapped in what was once their dream home in El Cerrito, California....
my body is a TI-83 struleggling to run DOOM and I am ready to move to the next step: hot yoga (lemmy.world)
Describe your gender using only US states (feddit.de)
Escaping the Oklahoma Duck Bowl (lemmy.world)
Palrule (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle's central concept based on real-world theory involving ancient sites (www.vg247.com)
Americans will measure with anything but the metric system. (lemmy.world)
Venus by Tuesday (lemmy.world)