Former President Barack Obama said a way forward for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is only possible if people acknowledge the “complexity” of the situation.
“If there’s any chance of us being able to act constructively to do something, it will require an admission of complexity and maintaining what on the surface may seem contradictory ideas that what Hamas did was horrific, and there’s no justification for it. And … that the occupation and what’s happening to Palestinians is unbearable,” Obama said in an interview on the podcast “Pod Save America.”
The former president’s comments come as the Israeli military focuses its offensive against Hamas in Gaza City and northern parts of the enclave.
Reddit probably rotted my brain, but I’m struggling to determine how this is anything but “everyone sucks here.” On this matter, I don’t think anyone has been truly in the right in a century. Can anyone provide a convincing argument otherwise?
I think he’s trying to get around the black and white viewpoints, and bring up the idea that Israel is committing war crimes here, which is outside the Overton window on the subject currently in US politics.
Exactly. One does not do politics and convince their opposition if they don’t use conciliating language.
Nah, you can go through the comments here and find people taking the easy, position here too. “Bombing kids is bad, so Israel is bad, so Palestine must be good, therefore I support Palestine.” No nuance, no attempts to look at a more complex situation or consider anything other than the most basic information.
Both sides suck, both sides will happily commit war crimes, and civilians on both sides are getting hurt. One side is getting more hurt than the other, but that’s just a difference in capability, not belief.
Stupid Palestinians fighting against colonists for the right to exist on their own land. DAE both sides?
How does this argument work when it comes to Russians in Crimea?
Both Jews and Palestinians have claims to the area as “their own land.”
You may note that when Russia invaded Crimea, the West did basically fuck all about it. Russia invaded it and so Russia has kept it. You wanna play that argument, then Israel gets to keep everything they got in '48 and '67.
If you’re arguing it’s Russia’s to take “back” because Crimea is part of Ukraine which used to be part of the Soviet Union, that’s also not a great argument. Ukraine’s borders were accepted and recognized internationally. By that token you could argue Palestine should be able to “take back” all of their territory to the '48 borders, and Israel was content with that border at the time. The Arab nations weren’t happy with that in the first place though, which is why they tried to wipe out Israel.
So maybe you argue that it’s the pre-1948 border they should be able to “take back,” and it should all just be one state, like Mandatory Palestine as it was under British Rule. Except neither side really wants a one-state solution and obviously the elimination of the entire Jewish people is not a good one.
You can keep going farther back and claim that it was all Ottomans anyway so only those who have really lived there since the 7th Century have a claim (ie. Palestinians). Of course they’re only there because of the Rashidun Caliphate, so why stop there? If we push back farther we should really give the region to the Greeks. If they pass we can give it to the Italians, and if they pass, oh look, hey, ethnic Jews have a claim to the area before even Rome showed up.
Now obviously, the modern Israeli government is tremendously overreacting and the West should sanction them to hell until they return to the table for a two-state solution (or any solution both sides agree on), Netanyahu is gone, and Palestinians are given their own recognized state. Palestinians need support, aid, and the backing of the globe to push for their rights as a country. But Hamas is not necessarily going to get them that either.
When are we giving Native Americans their land back?
Jews have zero claim to that land. There are original Palestinian jews and the israeli government is literally racist against them. This has nothing to do with ancestry. The israelis are mostly Eastern European or American jews. There is a good reason why Netanyahu looks so much like Putin.
israel’s borders are not accepted at all. Only countries half way across the globe from them accept their borders.
The only just solution is a one state solution with the returnal of the Palestinian land to the Palestinians. Just like the returnal of Crimean land to the Ukrainians.
Crazy how people are actually defending colonists as if they’re now rightful owners to land because they’ve been committing genocide for long enough.
70 % of the Jews living in Israel currently were born there. And about 20 % of Israelis are non-Jewish Arabs.
More than half of the Jews in Israel are Mizrahi. Your theory of European colonizers populating Israel is factually incorrect.
It’s the official policy of many of the most powerful nations of the world that only Palestine sucks here and that Israel can do no wrong and must be supported unconditionally. An “everyone sucks here” position would be much closer to the truth.
Palestinians and Israelis are overall fine, except when you have to listen to them talk about each other, it’s their governments that are so fucked.
This entire conflict is a story of overstepping state entities victimizing innocent civilians on both sides of this war nobody but them and their cronies wanted.
As much as we all hate comments like this…
“This.”
(Well said. Short, to the point, and the best summary I’ve seen in a while.)
That’s basically the rational take here. Israel was attacked and is defending itself, but going far and beyond self defense using the extermination of terrorists as an excuse to commit genocide. Palestinian civilians are caught up in the crossfire and are innocent of any wrongdoing, but the Palestinian government knowingly harbors Hamas within their borders and refuses to cooperate with Israel at every opportunity to create a two state system. Finally, there’s Hamas, who are bad guys full stop with no redeeming qualities.
So, Obama’s take is pretty solid. Nobody has their hands clean in all of this and everybody sucks, but there are still ways to stop the bloodshed, but those solutions are complicated. Especially when nobody really wants to come to the negotiation table right now. Israeli citizens right now remind me of American citizens in the wake of 9/11 - bloodthirsty and hungry for vengeance at any cost. So long as they remain furious, Netanyahu has a clear political motivation to continue the attacks.
This did not start this past October. Israel has been treating Gaza as an open air prison for over a decade. And before that there’s all the settler bullshit and decades of war crimes justified by dehumanizing Palestinians.
Of course the Palestinians haven’t been peaceful. Neither side has been peaceful since the 1940’s.
The government of Gaza is Hamas, elected in 2007.
Israeli civilians have also been caught in the crossfire. You know from the terrorist attack they committed 3 weeks ago that killed 1,400 and then the 200 innocent people they kidnapped and imprisoned as hostages somewhere in Gaza, which is what this is all about?
If Hamas freed the hostages, Israel would have a much harder time conducting this war in the way they are, but you can’t literally kidnap someone’s citizens and expect anything less.
What about Netanyahus relationship with the PLO before Hamas. He’s been playing both sides using the fear of Palestinian militants as a political football, just trying to stay elected and ignoring the views of the average secular Israeli.
Israel is being led by a group of religious extremists.
It’s complicated, and both sides have committed unbelievable atrocities, but Israeli leadership have overplayed their card. Their crimes over the last few weeks will echo for decades to come.
My guess it will have the opposite effect than they intended, Israel will lose out in the long term.
Time will tell.
You’re right that both sides have been awful.
While Israel may be led by a group of religious extremists, so is Palestine and Gaza specifically by extremist terrorists.
This round of tit for tat will echo like all the previous rounds over the last 70 years.
Until Hamas frees the hostages, it’s virtually impossible to overplay the hand.
This will just be another footnote of ugly killing on both sides in a long history of ugly killings.
I’m not so sure. The current geopolitical outlook leaves Israel in a tough spot. With the failure of globalisation and the declining importance of the Middle Eastern hydrocarbons, there is actually a breaking point.
I don’t necessarily think that breaking point would be reached, but if the current government does not restrain themselves and play their card correctly, it will count against them going forward.
Despite what Americans think, their previous actions have counted against them, too.
I’m the modern information age. The old tactics of statecraft and economic dominance fall apart. The opposing axis wanted Israel to respond like this. It’s a huge mistake for them to continue with this approach.
It’s a multipolar world these days.
Which are the poles you see in this multipolar world than were different from the poles over the last 50 years?
Suppose when you take the foreign policy of globalisation out of the equation, the geopolitical arena looks a lot different.
It’s hard to know how the relationships will develop. Israel geographical location has become at least 50% less important.
When you consider the possible impact of climate change and demographics over the next decade, coupled with the increasingly fragile financial outlook.
It’s not unfathomable that Israel ends up in an extremely exposed position without significant support from the West.
China and Russia are bound together by mutual interest in hydrocarbons, and Irans leaders would attempt to capitalise on every opportunity.
In a destabilised world, everyone will try to sieze the opportunity. It’s going to get very busy, Netanyahu is assuming a lot when he thinks that Israel is going to stay relevant in the long term.
Just wanted to add that it’s going to be multifaceted threats along with the multipolar geopolitical outlook. In situations like that, things get very simple. Things start to boil down to very simple decisions.
This doesn’t seem particularly internally consistent.
If the ME doesn’t matter because hydrocarbons don’t matter, why are Russia and China bound by them? Isn’t Russia in even deeper trouble since most of their hard currency is from exporting hydrocarbons?
When is the world being more destabilized than today and by who? Is the world stable right now?
Who is the financial outlook fragile for?
What are the impacts of climate change and demographics over the next decade?
How does this disproportionately work to the detriment of Israel?
I’m not even saying you’re wrong, but there’s a lot missing connecting this to the point you’re trying to make I think.
Nothing justifies war crimes.
But people justify Hamas attacks all the time by claiming they just defend themselves.
Did you really just just conflate every Hamas operation as a war crime?
That’s… Impressive.
Netanyahu also stoked the anti-Oslo crazies to the point that Rabin was assassinated. He’s more responsible for the current state of the conflict than anyone, period.
The victims. They are in the right. But they have no voice. Ironically though, as toxic as social media is, governments can’t get by with the same shit that they did 50 years ago (Sauce: US in Central America).
Here is a 2 minute video about being able to hold the idea that Hamas and Israel are both in the wrong and civilians are getting hurt on both sides as a result.
https://youtu.be/L0Zb9iUi0JM
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/L0Zb9iUi0JM
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
It’s not true that civilians are getting hurt in Gaza because of Hamas. They were already being killed off before the attacks.
“It’s complicated” is a constantly used rhetorical strategy by those in power to put off moral judgement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxC5HhKQ5ks 80 second video. This situation isn’t complicated at all.
Michael Brooks is missed. Great name btw.
I truly do think that Islamophobia and the United States having a lot of historical and economic ties to Israel are why we’ve allowed this to go on unchecked for decades.
Public opinion is definitely shifting in favor of Palestine though.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=RxC5HhKQ5ks
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I think that’s basically what he’s saying with more words. You’re not wrong in this case, but the “everybody sucks here” line is most often used by people who don’t actually know the details of what they’re talking about, but need to have an opinion on the record. (Other recent example being the Ukraine war situation)
In my opinion, this whole situation is too drunk guys who got in a fight over something stupid. Palestine got knocked out early, and so Israel is being vilified simply for being the one still standing, but now Palestine has got up and kidney punched Israel while it was turned away, and people are rooting for the underdog since they got back up. The problem with this, and the reason that Obama is speaking the way that he is, is because people seem to be forgetting all of the other horrible things that Hamas has done too, because they’re currently the crowd favorite.
So yes, everybody sucks here, and I think people are having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that, sometimes in a fight, there isn’t actually a 100% good guy. It’s just too drunk guys getting in a fight over something stupid.
Agree or disagree with other people’s opinions, so be it. But this comment is such a unearned hand waving away of other people’s thoughtful comments/opinions made on the subject, and it’s not a true representation of what’s going on.
See, reading your comment makes me think that you didn’t actually read the rest of mine, because that’s not what I said. I’m not talking about the people here… Mostly.
I did.
Well then I’m not sure where to go from here, because you’re implying that I said things which I didn’t.
What I quoted, which is what you did say, is very explicit…
There’s truly no reason for us to continue to go back and forth on this endlessly, that text is very specific and straightforward.
Your analogy assumes some sort of equivalency between the two drunk men, but in reality there’s a huge discrepancy of power between Israel and Palestine, one so vast that your analogy comes off as reductive. It’s not just “two drunk guys in a fight”, it’s more like a drunk guy and a child, which the drunk guy has been picking fights with since the child was born, and all of the drunk guy’s friends keep helping him beat this child up.
There’s a power discrepancy now, but there wasn’t always.
By this analogy, Palestine is a drunk 17 year old, who along with a bunch of 20-something friends jumped one another kid when he just turned 18. Except the 18 year old won the fight and the older pals of the original drunk kid have backed off. Beaten to shit, the 17 year old keeps trying to swing at the 18 year old, who continues just kicking him while he’s down and everyone is looking on in horror but unwilling to jump back in the fight.
The fact they went 1 v 8 probably contributes a lot to Israel’s absolute unwillingness to not put themselves in a position where they are less powerful.
I see where your coming from, and I suppose I should clarify: in this case, the reason that I invoke the simile, is that the original reason for ALL this drama, is religion. There is more than enough physical space for them both to live in the region happily, but because this is the Land of Israel that we’re talking about, they both claim exclusive right to it, and only one can have it.
Events since this original issue obviously can’t go overlooked, but it all stems from this unreasonable unwillingness to share plenty.
It’s a tale as old as time. Just like the Hatfields and McCoys. They’ve hated each other for so long neither side remembers what started it and both sides have a list of grievances longer than they can keep track of and the score can never be settled. It’s to the point where there is no right side; both are wrong. You can make arguments that one side is more wrong than the other, but I’m not in favor of a “let the least wrong win” approach. Both sides are objectively wrong and both sides must stop.
This is simply not true. Palestinians were copacetic before the British mandate, the Balfour declaration, the declaration of the state of Israel and the Nakba.
Just come to your own conclusion
Thanks. People want to pretend this started a month ago and not understand the history.
Because the truth is that Israel is WAY worse than Palestine. They’re openly calling for genocide. Resistance to oppression is good, actually, and so basically whatever Palestine does while still being oppressed is morally fine, while Israel continuing to oppress them is not. Anything anybody says criticizing palestine’s reaction to oppression is whataboutism, because they’re literally the victims of genocide.