Gov. Kathy Hochul and other leading Democrats blasted the rally as “abhorrent and morally repugnant.”
A pro-Palestinian rally Sunday in Times Square endorsed by the city chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America ensnared prominent party members amid widespread condemnation of the event.
Gov. Kathy Hochul and other leading Democrats blasted the rally as “abhorrent and morally repugnant” and drew a dividing line with far-left members of the party — including New York Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman, who denounced the attacks and called for a ceasefire but didn’t take a stand on the rally.
“I condemn Hamas’ attack in the strongest possible terms,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a statement. “No child and family should ever endure this kind of violence and fear, and this violence will not solve the ongoing oppression and occupation in the region. An immediate ceasefire and de-escalation is urgently needed to save lives.”
I agree with the statement that you are making, but, if I may be pedantic for just a moment, the way that your example was worded is not an example of gaslighting; it is actually an example of something called "affirming the disjunct".
This. I'm against Hamas, and I'm also against the current government of Israel. I'm at a point of only caring for civilians of Israel and Palestine after reading up on the history of the conflict. Any one else? They're part of the problem.
It makes zero sense to compare the violence of the occupied with the violence of the occupiers. How many Israelis settled in Palestine because they moved from cities like New York? Do they really have equal share in the conflict when they moved from a place like America to steal land from an olive farmer whose family has been there for thousands of years.
Many people didn't choose to be born in both regions, and many civilians who don't hold those shitty ideals are dead that don't deserve to be. But if there never will be peace, and one group should go to establish peace. It certainly should be the occupiers
What's awful is you see this both with people who dislike Hamas, and with people who support the Palestinians. There's plenty of "um actually" folks I've seen on Lemmy who are putting Hamas in a sympathetic light under the guise of Palestinian liberation. And you need not look far to find people who lump all Palestinians together with those terrorists.
The rally was well intentioned, I hope, but horribly tone deaf. It would've been better to recast it as support for Palestinians and Israeli civilians, given current events, and condemned Hamas for hurting both.
I hate how often nuance is lost, and that you have to very loudly point out the nuance to make sure it's clear, but that's the world we live in. This rally failed to do that.
I mean they're the same. Israel created a situation where the only way to struggle against oppression is to mass-murder civilians, so naturally civilians are being mass-murdered.
Edit: Obligatory I don't support the mass-murder of civilians.
Is that accurate in Gaza? Gaza has the 1967 borders, broad fiscal and in kind aid built in. Political autonomy, a foreign, non-Israeli border and zero settlements with existing settlers being forced at gunpoint to leave almost 20 years ago.
Gaza could easily "struggle" by building an actual democratic society, wealthy enough to fund a legitimate war against Israel. Instead it chooses to fund it's multimillionaire leaders and their foreign mansions and spend whatever it can on weapons of war and enslaving it's neighbors.
That article is kind of odd in its linking NYC DSA so heavily with a rally it didn’t organize and at which zero prominent DSA members were seen. I can’t find anything on their web site “endorsing” it. In the last paragraph, there’s even a quote from an actual organizer criticizing DSA for not having a presence at the rally.
It kind of makes me wonder if it’s a smear campaign by the city’s establishment Democrats. In NYC, DSA is probably a bigger threat to their power than any other party.
Threads like this always blow my mind. People supporting Hamas here, you realize they're the same as Isis right?
They're literally dragging women thru the streets raping them, while people stand by and cheer. They're targeting women and children in the streets, non combatants. They're taking hostages as human shields and bragging about it.
Can people really support this? I can't support many of the actions of the Israeli government, but this is quite clearly not a case of both sides being the same and Hamas is the one making that abundantly clear with their horrific actions.
And you can support the plight of the Palestinians without supporting Hamas. The Palestinians elected Hamas in 2006, but since then Hamas has cancelled elections.
Imagine if Trump decided to cancel the 2020 elections (he wouldn't have the power to do so under our political system, but just assume he found a way). Would the fact that he was elected in 2016 mean that he was still the legitimate political leader in 2023 having cancelled elections? Of course not.
Hamas' leaders live in luxury outside of the Israel/Gaza Strip/West Bank area. (I believe they're in Qatar.) They don't care if the Palestinian people suffer and die as long as they can blame it on the Israelis and spin it into more attacks on Israel.
Hamas needs to go not just for Israel's sake, but for the sake of the Palestinian people.
That's not the only difference. I distinctly don't remember a time where Israeli soldiers dragged slaves through Tel Aviv to the cheers of a Jewish population.
I'm not finding women being raped in the streets there? I'm not finding kids being gunned down in the streets, can you show me where the Israelis did that here?
They are not nearly the same even with your false equivalence.
I hate to break it to these assholes but if mass murdering and raping children aren't among the acts where you draw a line, then you need to get the hell off this planet. Those are not legitimate targets - those are a fucking war crimes. Same goes for everyone regardless of affiliations.
I mostly agree with you, and that should include Israel. Israel does not deserve support as long as it supports Zionism any more or less than Hamas. I agree this is horrible, and the whole situation is horrible. We should cut support to Israel and continue to not support Hamas.
I don't care about Zionism. As far as I'm concerned every government on Earth - including my own US - who kills innocent people through action and inaction should have to answer for it. The individuals who did it, from top to bottom, should have to answer for their crimes.
Unfortunately we live in the real world - aka hell. Nothing will change and people will keep on being horrible and never be called to account.
Despite how much I agree with the DSA’s domestic agenda, their official international and geopolitical stances are frankly naïve and reductive. I resigned my membership after I saw their official response to the Ukrainian War, which contained a nauseating amount of “kumbaya” bullshit, as well as elements of Russian apologia and propaganda narratives.
That would be like some county asking the US to deescalate the day after the 9/11 attacks.
Yeah and our escalation really improved things, didn't it?
What Israel is going to do is mount a full scale invasion of Gaza and they're going to be even more heavy handed than usual. Tens of thousands of innocent people are going to die, that don't have to die.
Yeah and our escalation really improved things, didn't it?
Essentially yes. "Making an example" out of Afghanistan and Iraq made the militaries of the Middle East crack down on official support of terrorist cells in their countries.
And, per capita, the death toll in Israel would be equivalent to an attack on the US causing 25,000 deaths. Imagine if someone attacked the United States and 25,000 people died. Would we be showing restraint?
So the good guys kill civilians, including the elderly and children, and that's justified because Israel did things that were wrong?
Hamas aren't the good guys here. If they targeted military areas, I'd agree that this was a legitimate reply to Israeli violence. However, targeting innocent citizens - especially in the brutal way that they did - removes any semblance of high ground that they might have.
Now, this isn't to say that the Israeli government are the good guys either. They've done many things that obviously shouldn't have been done. Some were in reply to attacks. Some provoked attacks.
There's plenty of blame to go around for the general situation and the solution to this isn't going to be easy. But saying "well, the Israeli government did X so killing Israeli civilians was justified" is totally wrong.