+1 for barefoot shoes for lifting and just chilling

Maybe for the same reason that Hamas fires rockets into Israeli territory all the time, or pledges to kill as many jews as they can.

Regional tension has been going on for far longer than that, but Hamas is the elected government currently in Gaza. They began the current fighting. End of story.

There was a ceasefire on Oct. 6. Then Hamas and other Palestinian fighters started the present conflict in Gaza on Oct.7. I won’t recount how because Lemmy doesn’t like to hear when what they perceive to be a victim group commits unthinkable atrocities. But then they took these hostages back into Gaza, and hid them in tunnels under civilian infrastructure. This is fact. Hamas started the present war, but everyone only blames Israel. I believe this qualifies as what you call victim blaming bullshit.

This echo chamber doesn’t want to hear about the fact that Hamas is a murderous terror group that intentionally endangers Palestinian civilians to further its religious and political cause.

Israeli jews are indigenous to the Middle East, many expelled from their homelands in places like Iraq, Egypt, and Yemen. Your claim of “colonialism” (the word you’re looking for here) may be a common view in the West, but it’s an outright misconception.

The wars you’re talking about: the big ones in 1948 and 1967 were started by groups of Arab states attacking Israel for declaring their independence. Israel defended itself.

Most importantly, October 7 of this year was an absolutely brutal bloodbath perpetrated against women, children, elderly people – civilians. Twenty-year-olds dancing for peace. Residents of left-leaning Kibbutzes, many of whom were outspoken supporters of Palestinian rights. Members of Hamas and other Palestinians streamed across the border and shot civilians, beheaded them, lit their houses on fire, killed their children with grenades, tied women and girls to trees and raped them.

The next day, before a single Israeli bomb had fallen in Gaza, there were demonstrations in the West against Israel.

I am a Gen-Xer who was raised Catholic in America. The old-school church values of my childhood in the 1970s were mostly liberal democratic, promoting humility, circumspection, and Golden Rule, love-thy-neighbor attitudes. (Setting aside the entire organization’s liability for the systematic raping of children, that is, which is a lot to ask.)

But with the more extreme politics of groups like Opus Dei, the modern Catholic Church in America, by contrast, has become a right-wing propaganda machine. It promotes a noxious brand of pseudo-religious pomposity and holier-than-thou windbaggery, practiced by preening, empty-headed bigots and jackasses who couldn’t find real spirituality if it bit them in the ass.*

*Just my opinion, but I’m fucking right.

Okay, but do you acknowledge that Hamas has a great deal of responsibility for the lack of infrastructure for civilians in the Gaza Strip, of which they are the government? That Hamas spends literally billions of aid money toward building a vast system of tunnels from which they fire rockets at Israel, attempting to kill jews, because it’s in their mission statement?

Can you see that it’s a little more nuanced of than simply “Hamas good, Israel bad”?

To your response, “no they are not lol”:

[Jews, Like Palestinians, Are ‘Indigenous’ to the Middle East

](https://reason.com/2023/10/18/jews-like-palestinians-are-indigenous-to-the-middle-east/)

I don’t agree with IDF’s plan. But nobody’s acknowledging that Israeli jews are a constant target.

I suggest you learn more

Referring to the murders by Hamas and other Palestinians on October 7. That has everything to do with the current conflict, right?

Jews in the Middle East are indigenous people, too. So you’re saying it’s okay to massacre them?

…after jihadists go on killing spree and cut the heads off innocent civilians, throw grenades at children, dismember people while forcing their families to watch. All in the name of their supposed god,

Brilliant game

What Is This Thing