At this point the Israeli government are terrorists because of the genocide they are causing. But I’m now reluctant to give them that classification only because they are a body of government that represents a country. The Houthis and Hamas groups don’t really represent any country. They certainly don’t represent Gaza because they’re also exploiting them and decided to kill many innocent people, the event that started this whole war.
Unless you’re saying that Hamas is the representative of the Gazan people and so that makes all of Gaza responsible for the attack on Israel?
The two groups in power in this situation are both horrible and currently Israel is doing unforgivable acts of eradication that is only going to further the hate they get from everyone that they’re trying to destroy. But let’s not think of this as “good guys vs bad guys”. There’s no good side, both are horrible, and innocent people are paying the price.
Both of those groups do represent a sizeable portion of their respective people but both people remain fractured without getting into the distinction between a people and an officially recognized country.
Unless you’re saying that Hamas is the representative of the Gazan people and so that makes all of Gaza responsible for the attack on Israel?
Hamas is the current representation of the Palestinian armed resistance. Palestinian resistance was not always violent and was not always led by religious fundamentalists. Take your above sentence to its logical conclusion, let’s say that they are fully representative then what? Are all the Gazan civilians also terrorist supporters/sympathizers too?
My point is that designating movements that seek to overthrow regimes or fight against occupation purely as terrorists ignores actual motivations of these groups and the people they represent politically (regardless of how much public support they actually have).
You can choose to believe that Palestinians and Yemenis take up arms to spread fear and kill for the sake of their religious beliefs/hatred or because of their inherent nature or some other reasoning, or you can offer the same intellectual charity that you offer Israeli people who support current and previous regimes and acts of unimaginable brutality.
Both those groups hold horribly regressive ideologies but the reason that they exist cannot be reduced to just terrorism no matter how convenient it may be ideologically. Attacks on civilians on Oct 7 are not justified but resistance groups have a right to resist occupation with force under international law. The Houthis are the de facto authority in Yemen and despite not having international recognition are taking actions that could be justified under the obligation of signatories to the genocide convention.
You might disagree with either of these framings and rightly so as matters of international law are complex but you have to at the very least offer the same charitability in trying to analyze the underlying motivations even if the groups representing these actions are reprehensible.
At this point the Israeli government are terrorists because of the genocide they are causing. But I’m now reluctant to give them that classification only because they are a body of government that represents a country. The Houthis and Hamas groups don’t really represent any country. They certainly don’t represent Gaza because they’re also exploiting them and decided to kill many innocent people, the event that started this whole war.
Unless you’re saying that Hamas is the representative of the Gazan people and so that makes all of Gaza responsible for the attack on Israel?
The two groups in power in this situation are both horrible and currently Israel is doing unforgivable acts of eradication that is only going to further the hate they get from everyone that they’re trying to destroy. But let’s not think of this as “good guys vs bad guys”. There’s no good side, both are horrible, and innocent people are paying the price.
Both of those groups do represent a sizeable portion of their respective people but both people remain fractured without getting into the distinction between a people and an officially recognized country.
Hamas is the current representation of the Palestinian armed resistance. Palestinian resistance was not always violent and was not always led by religious fundamentalists. Take your above sentence to its logical conclusion, let’s say that they are fully representative then what? Are all the Gazan civilians also terrorist supporters/sympathizers too?
My point is that designating movements that seek to overthrow regimes or fight against occupation purely as terrorists ignores actual motivations of these groups and the people they represent politically (regardless of how much public support they actually have).
You can choose to believe that Palestinians and Yemenis take up arms to spread fear and kill for the sake of their religious beliefs/hatred or because of their inherent nature or some other reasoning, or you can offer the same intellectual charity that you offer Israeli people who support current and previous regimes and acts of unimaginable brutality.
Both those groups hold horribly regressive ideologies but the reason that they exist cannot be reduced to just terrorism no matter how convenient it may be ideologically. Attacks on civilians on Oct 7 are not justified but resistance groups have a right to resist occupation with force under international law. The Houthis are the de facto authority in Yemen and despite not having international recognition are taking actions that could be justified under the obligation of signatories to the genocide convention.
You might disagree with either of these framings and rightly so as matters of international law are complex but you have to at the very least offer the same charitability in trying to analyze the underlying motivations even if the groups representing these actions are reprehensible.