NoneOfUrBusiness

Forget everything you know (or think you know) about the conflict for a second. Now look at what human rights groups, including the UN, have to say about what’s happening in Gaza and Lebanon. It’s called a genocide because it is; it’s really that simple and there are mountains of evidence published by the likes of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and, again the UN. Also to dispell that particular piece of propaganda: they’re not trying to get the hostages back. If they were they’d turn the first ceasefire agreement into a “permanent” ceasefire (there are no permanent ceasefires in this conflict) and end the whole thing. They want to genocide and settle Gaza, so they’re doing that while sabotaging ceasefire negotiations.

By the way if you’re going to side with the side that has hostages, then you should read up on Palestinian detainees first. Long story short: Israel arrests Palestinians from the West Bank or (until 2005) Gaza for dubious or no charges—which they can do because these places are governed under Israeli military law rather than civil law—and sometimes torture them while stealing years of their life. Part of Palestinian resistance organizations’ raison d’etre is to return those people to their homes, which requires constant action because Israel arrests more Palestinians every day. There were already thousands of those detainees before October 7th and thousands more have been arrested after. Note: We’re not talking about Palestinians who are arrested for legitimate crimes doing their time here; these people were kidnapped as a punishment against Palestinians for existing. If this doesn’t sound like hostages to you, you should do some soul searching and ask yourself if you’re trying to learn or justify your beliefs.

This probably sounds biased to you, but I took care to only state verifiable, indisputably objective facts here Sometimes things are just that simple. That doesn’t make Hamas good guys; they’re more gray with some legitimate resistance actions and some straight up terrorism, and it’s not always clear which is which.

Finally, if you want to learn more about the conflict in general and about the conditions that drove Hamas to launch the October 7th attack to begin with, you should see what Amnesty International and other human rights groups have to say on the topic. The long story short is that Israel subjects Palestinians to Apartheid conditions along with a slow-burn genocide to serve their long-term goal of colonizing the whole Palestine and (to their more extremist factions) expand beyond it.

Mondoweiss isn’t unconditional pro-Palestine propaganda. It’s a well-sourced pro-Palestinian news site.

How does Israel’s economy come into play here? This is about Middle Eastern people boycotting a bunch of American franchises and other stuff in (sometimes misguided) solidarity with Gaza.

I mean it gets the customers status symbols and the manufacturers money. As long as those phones later end up on the used market it’s a win-win.

Oh I see. That makes sense, and gives me some hope for the future.

Most (including US) current generation weapons systems have been untested.

Hasn’t a lot of it been tested in Ukraine and Gaza? That’s part of why Israel is useful for the West; they get to test their shiny new toys.

In other words, using qualifiers like inferior or superior for literally untested weapons(and yes, weapons are untested until used against an enemy) Is purely a faith/propaganda thing.

This makes sense in a conflict between equals, but for example Hezbollah literally doesn’t have an air force. Which makes sense because they’re a paramilitary organization, but like yeah it’s not really a question who’s outgunning who here. Hezbollah, and Russian aligned countries in general, primarily use old Soviet models which were at best on equal footing with contemporary Western models. Meanwhile the IDF is one of the most modern armies in the world, only being manned by morons.

If you need more proof that Hezbollah is outgunned here, then look at the state of Southern Lebanon compared to Northern Israel.

It must be remembered that Ukraine is using Western arms so while they’re losing in numbers their equipment is of superior quality. Hezbollah doesn’t have that advantage, and in fact it’s the opposite since they rely on inferior Russian and Iranian gear.

You didn’t contradict anything they said, so…

Adding to what everyone else said, while GDP growth in one year doesn’t really matter much except if it’s really big or negative (i.e. shrinking economy) over time it can lead to big differences between different economies. No or little GDP growth is what we call a stagnant economy and for what that looks like in a first world country take a look at Japan. In short, though, it’s not a fun time.

I mean does the harm per dose really matter? They’re both extremely addictive hard drugs that can literally kill you if you use them irresponsibly. Again, I know cocaine is worse, but not to an extent that warrants different treatment. Cocaine would also likely be safer (though probably still more dangerous as alcohol, I admittedly don’t know enough to say much here) if it was socially accepted like alcohol.

The other way around and yes, pretty much. I mean it’s probably a bit below cocaine but like yeah, that shit is bad.

It’s week and other tame drugs < cigarettes < alcohol and other strong shit I’d say.

They never had the moral high ground.

However Iran is as big a threat to Israel as the average US citizen.

How so?

You got many answers, but part of it is because of shit like this.

They’re both not elected anymore and a resistance organization. They were elected on a platform of not-exclusively-peaceful resistance (peaceful resistance inside Palestine and especially inside Gaza was render impossible by Israel by 2006-2007, so their resistance activities are now exclusively violent). Resistance activities are supported by the population of Gaza, even if many don’t support Hamas specifically. If your point is that October 7th implies they don’t care about Gazan lives, that’s patently false. If that’s not what you meant, then explain what you mean by “they don’t care about Gazan lives”.

Pray tell, which elected leaders?

I’ve actually seen some Muslim American leader (not sure who, maybe the mayor of Dearborn?) saying something like this. At least with Republicans in charge democrats would need to oppose them instead of gleefully supporting the genocide. Not sure how much this logic checks out, but it’s a thing I guess.

See, that’s what they want you to believe. Nobody’s pissing on you, they’re taking a big fat shit and you’re in ground zero.

I don’t think anyone on Lemmy seriously believes in trickle down economics.