Israel's response was very similar to the US's response to 9/11. 3,000 Americans were killed by terrorists (a smaller percentage of the population than Israelis killed on 10/7) and as a response the US started two wars killing at least 100 times as many Afghans and Iraqis (there are lots of debates about the total casualties there too just like Gaza). This is not a defense of Israel, just a fact that seemingly is never part of the conversation that I think can help people better understand why this is happening.
Today they still spit to the side when having to say the name George Bush or Tony Blair, among others.
You either weren't there, have a bad memory, are watching typically mainstream new sources, or are willfully ignoring the voices that are having that conversation today.
Many of the ills today can be traced back to powers grabbed at the time to assist that so-called "war on terror".
I genuinely don't know what distinction you're trying to make here. Do you think there aren't equivalent protests in Israel? There were minorities in both countries that opposed these responses from the beginning and those responses generally became more unpopular as time went on just like the men who spearheaded them, but a majority of both countries were initially supportive.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but your initial post reads as if Israel's genocide in Palestine is consistent with historical precedent such as the Iraq war when facing similar national traumas.
I'm suggesting that many of us are disgusted now by Israel's genocide, land theft, and murder ... just as millions of us were disgusted by the Iraq war.
>Perhaps I'm wrong, but your initial post reads as if Israel's genocide in Palestine is consistent with historical precedent such as the Iraq war when facing similar national traumas.
The US response was deadlier in both total number of people killed and in proportion to the inciting terrorist attacks. Both countries also committed clear war crimes along the way.
The primary distinguishing factor between the two is the label of "genocide" only consistently being applied to Israel's actions, but that is mostly due to practical reasons, namely the relative small size of Gaza in terms of both geography and population. If Afghanistan and Iraq had the population density of Gaza, not only would that have likely made the US response even more deadly due to the mechanics of warfare, but it certainly would have led to more people describing the US's actions as genocide.
Once again, this is not a defense of Israel. If this reads to you like I'm downplaying the actions of Israel, then you are underestimating the death and destruction caused by the US. Some estimates have the US responsible for as many as a million deaths.
While I recall many at the time calling it a genocide due to the sanctions, the thrust of the military action was an illegal war.
Israel, by contrast, systematically murdered civilians, journalists, starved a civilian population with impunity and with government intent, and ... the list is tragically too long. Size and numbers have nothing to do with it.
Israels actions were ruled a genocide in the ICJ, the UN, among many other genocide experts (including Jewish experts).
The Israeli's had/have actual genocidal intent. Just read the reprehensible words of some of the current Israeli cabinet. Not some radical fringe, but the actual Israeli cabinet.
Sure, you mention you're not defending Israel, but the implication that there is some double standard here (perhaps "antisemitic" given your focus on labelling) is in itself a defense of Israel.
The current "administration" is a disgusting body, and the Zionist ideology, in its current form, is an absurd, preposterous ideology which gives birth to a population who dehumanise their "enemy" in exactly the same way as the Nazis dehumanised the Jews (not my words, but the words of Jewish scholars).
>Israel, by contrast, systematically murdered civilians,
I'm not willing to ignore the US's propensity for bombing weddings.[1][2][3][4][5]
>journalists
Or the notorious Collateral Murder strikes.[6]
> starved a civilian population with impunity and with government intent
I already hit on this with the mentioning of Gaza's population density and the mechanics of war. Gaza is much smaller and denser which means that the same bomb dropped there will kill more people and destroy more infrastructure than in Iraq or Afghanistan. That has caused a larger percentage of the arable land in Gaza to be destroyed and they already had less of it to begin with. This had made them more reliant on Israel. The US simply didn't have the opportunity to control the food supply in the same way and I'm not willing to categorize a lack of opportunity as evidence of a lack of intent. And despite that all, the long tail of the US's actions still has led to a food crisis.[7]
>Just read the reprehensible words of some of the current Israeli cabinet. Not some radical fringe, but the actual Israeli cabinet.... The current "administration" is a disgusting body, and the Zionist ideology, in its current form, is an absurd, preposterous ideology which gives birth to a population who dehumanise their "enemy" in exactly the same way as the Nazis dehumanised the Jews
If we're talking "reprehensible words" and dehumanization, it hasn't even been two weeks since a US congressperson said that Muslims were below dogs. The US has the benefit of two extra decades of hindsight and many still haven't learned the lesson you're discussing.[8].
I genuinely think you should read through some of this[9]. It sounds like it might open your eyes to the US's actual record of behavior.
Thanks for the links. I'm afraid I won't click on them because I'm not sure what we're disagreeing on now, so probably a good moment to end this. I'll absolutely call the US a power hungry monster that has inflicted genocide on many people. Israel has done the same from the point of view of a perverse, religious-nationalist ideology. Not much point splitting hairs on that one.
I was alive at the time. While there were some protests, i dont recall them being all that significant, and many of the objecting voices seemed more concerned with the price tag rather than the human cost.
You might be referring to a different period, but I'll note that the anti-war protests in early 2003 (immediately before the invasion of Iraq) were quite literally record breaking.
This is pure misinformation. I have personally never seen such large crows as the anti war demonstrations of 2002-2003. There 100k people marching several times for several weeks in the European capitals I know.
Some estimate that these were even bigger than the demonstrations against the war in Vietnam in the 1960s. These put the total number of people going out in demonstrations world wide at 30M+. This war was massively protested against, any which way you count.
This is a fair criticism of the U.S., though I'll also point out that millions of Palestinians have lived out their entire lives under occupation now, and history didn't start on October 7. To me, all of the evidence going back to 1948 points emphatically to genocide.
Also, I'm not clear on whether there was a precursor to 9/11 comparable to Israel's response to Gaza's 2018 non-violent protest, the Great March of Return.
