#it's just kinda sickening to look anywhere outside the bubble rn.

[canmom]

this fucking circus of 'project the Israeli flag on every available surface as the bombs fall', from the govs of every Western country, is so indescribably bleak. there's not even the pretense of both-sidesing 'oh it's so sad that they're killing each other over there' anymore, no mealy-mouthed 'we hope for a quick end to the violence', it's just full on cheering for the side carrying out a retaliatory massacre.

if you treated any population the way the two million-ish people in Gaza have been treated - if, for more than a (significantly curtailed) lifetime, you restrict their access to food, water, medicine, and electricity, strangle their economy, uphold an apartheid system with different legal rights based on ethnicity, prevent them from leaving, put invasive checkpoints on every other street, routinely blow up their homes, have snipers maim and kill people - if you leave no possibility that things could get better in the future...

well, orthogonal to what's 'moral', it's simply unsurprising someone in that situation would sooner or later try to fight back, however futilely. fuck, we saturate our media with stories of heroic rebels standing up against oppressors - it's not a foreign idea. it's not complicated to recognise that as long as conditions are so horrible, and so obviously, undeniably caused by Israel, organisations like Hamas will be able to position themselves as liberators.

but the Western Overton window seems to squarely centre on the idea that Hamas shooting back retroactively justifies the whole system of repression, and in fact it should probably be stepped up a notch. Netanyahu is out there talking like a fucking Final Fantasy villain about genociding the whole Strip, the Security Minister's throwing around phrases like 'human animals', and it still gives no one pause. like where the fuck is anyone in Gaza supposed to go? on one side is a massive wall and a warzone, on the second is Egypt's closed border, and on the third is the fucking ocean. so, what, run to a refugee camp elsewhere in Gaza? no, Israel will bomb that too.

(but of course (sigh) "geopolitics" overrides everything, always. the conclusion is already written, the justification is an afterthought. the West wants to keep its loyal, dependent outpost, so the Palestinians have to die. "it's so tragic, but there's no other option, you see? Hamas definitely steals all the aid ever. we can't imagine doing anything other than sending boxes of food of course. it's a difficult problem! now quick, sell the Israelis some more bombs, they'll run out at this rate.")

#i don't expect this will change anyone's mind one way or another. #it's just kinda sickening to look anywhere outside the bubble rn.