US Politics on Sidechat | In colonial contexts it is very common for oppressed people groups to be radicalized or militarized and respond with massacre-style attacks against members of the colonizing group. This does not make massacres okay, and this post acts as if it does.

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US Politics 1w

In colonial contexts it is very common for oppressed people groups to be radicalized or militarized and respond with massacre-style attacks against members of the colonizing group. This does not make massacres okay, and this post acts as if it does.

US Politics 1w

Hamas was fully justified in doing what it had to do after so many years of oppression

Anonymous 1w

Also I didn’t realize the OP I’m quoting is actually an Israel supporter whose original comment was a strawman argument but I have seen other people try to defend Hamas, so figured I would provide some context of broader anti-colonial massacres and how massacres are just always bad.

Anonymous 1w

No one is reading all this btw

Anonymous 1w

I can list you a dozen examples of colonist populations being massacred in an outbreak of violence by a colonized group. It happens right now regularly in West Papua in fact, where militant groups kill Indonesian workers and shopkeepers, and the Indonesian government has responded with massacres and repression that could be considered genocide. That does not mean those Indonesian workers and shopkeepers deserved to die.

Anonymous

OP 1w

In 1622, the Powhatan launched an organized massacre attack against the English settlers in Virginia. This killed a quarter of the English population and killed men, women, and children indiscriminately in an effort to halt English colonial expansion and push them back to Jamestown. The English responded with a campaign of ethnic cleaning and retaliatory massacres across the Virginia peninsula (sound familiar?).

Anonymous

OP 1w

Similar patterns occur globally. The Herero and Namaqua genocide in Namibia was incited by the massacre of 100 German colonists. Tasmanian Aboriginal attacks on expanding Australian settlements was used as justification for their near-complete extermination by the British.

Anonymous

OP 1w

These anti-colonial massacres were almost always in response to previous violence by settlers or the seizing of land and property by settlers. They are a predictable result of settler colonialism and are frequently for sympathetic reasons. But that does not change the massacre of civilian people to be something moral. It’s always immoral, even if you understand why it happened.

Anonymous

OP 1w

As soon as we cross the line to say that massacring civilians is justified, that allows for the justification of just about every genocide and massacre there has been, because the perpetrators always believe they are on the right side. Hamas believes they are defending themselves, and so do the Israelis committing genocide in Gaza. Whoever is ultimately correct is irrelevant to those doing the massacres, because they will always believe they are on the right side.

Anonymous

OP 1w

So massacring of civilians has to be unacceptable no matter the circumstances. And sure you might claim that “settlers don’t count as civilians” but that’s exactly what Israel would say about the Palestinian children it murders, except with “terrorist sympathizer” instead. You can’t get around by trying to justify a massacre because that justification can always be used by a different actor in another direction.

Anonymous

OP 1w

Nah I just wanted to see how people would react, it went better than expected tbh I thought more people would support Hamas