I’ve had multiple family members deployed to active warzones.
Whenever we talked about war, it was never about politics. It was always “X’s tour is supposed to finish next month,” or “I heard something happened near [town], wasn’t X deployed near there?”
I know how everyone talks about it on the internet, but what is it like for you at home?
I’m going to give an honest answer, but i fully expect to be downvoted and demonized for doing so. Nothing I can do about that, but op, you want an honest answer, this is it. I’ll also add that I would 100% consider myself leftist, in fact, extremely leftist in most of my views. Why the hell would my username be what it is and why the hell would I be on lemmy if I wasn’t… anyway… here’s the answer since you asked for it:
The large majority of jews I know, including myself and my family feel like this current war is the fault of Hamas. Oct 7 doesn’t happen, this war doesn’t happen. We also are continually annoyed by the fact that most people on the left, constantly refuse to acknowledge that Hamas has been pushing this war forward non-stop for decades. All you have to do is look up number of missiles launched at Israel since 2000 to see that. People no-doubt try to rebut this by saying “but Israel has been stealing territory”. My constant response to that is they have been taking territory to establish buffer zones to enhance security. As almost all of this land has been taken after conflict. Israel even tried to give back some of this land, but was then attacked again, and had to take land back in order to protect itself – But eventually our conversation just goes back to why this is even happening and we are always frustrated by the fact that any argument from the left condemning Zionists always begins in 1948 – when in fact the troubles of the region started hundreds of years before that. This pre-1948 history seems to never be brought up however. So the blame is always cast 100% on jews and all of the attacks on Jewish civilians within Israel are never ever given the time of day.
It’s incredibly frustrating and scary, because the narrative is fully turning into “jews are evil”, and there is nothing any Jewish person can do about it. Jews are never going to willingly leave Israel and Hamas is never going to stop trying to eradicate jews. There are only 16ish million jews on the planet and almost 2 billion Muslims. There is no way jews could ever win this propaganda war. I think a lot of jews who feel they are on the left side of the political spectrum are too scared to even speak about their feelings on Israel/Palestine at the moment, because they know they are going to be vastly outnumbered and demonized, by those they would usually consider friends, with anything they say. So most of us are silent on the subject because we don’t want to be ostracized.
I will end this by saying, we of course feel bad for civilians caught in the crossfire, but we feel like Jewish civilians are not given that same respect. The sentiment we get is that Jewish civilians seem to deserve it.
Yeah, I see where you’re coming from. I mean, I’m also 100% a leftist, I’m extremely left on most issues, but I also just don’t get why so many people are opposed to this one particular state.
I mean, people always talk about the whole conflict with Germany starting in 1939, but you really have to consider that those wars happened because they were reclaiming territory like the Danzig Corridor that belonged to them historically. They even tried giving territory back to France by setting up the Vichy Republic. And it was the communists and partisans going around trying to stir up a class war who really started things, we had to put them in camps for the sake of security. And I feel bad for any innocent people caught up in it, but it just feels like nobody extends the same concerns to the German civilians the government is trying to protect. At the end of the day, if the Reichstag Fire hadn’t happened, none of this would be happening.
Oh! My mistake, it seems I mixed up the names of some countries and events there. You’re totally right though, if those people didn’t want to get massacred and starved, they shouldn’t have tried to resist your political project and/or had homes in places you wanted to forcibly seize. You know, this is just like what I’m always saying, “It’s your own fault you got slapped, because you shouldn’t have resisted.” I mean, that’s what leftism is all about, amirite?
not a fan of false equivalencies.
blocked.
I appreciate the honesty but you seem to be missing the perspective that:
The existence of the State of Israel is an explicit British colonization project and currently exists as a puppet state of “the empire”.
The power imbalance between the state of Israel and Hamas and the repeated, and well documented, war crimes and ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the State of Israel.
Left wing vs Right wing is a false dichotomy. You will have opinions and viewpoints of both matter your political self identification and they are poorly defined.
I would be curious to know your opinions about the judenrätes of WWII (whether they were heroes or villains, left wing vs right wing, etc.) and how the current State of Israel is not just a continuation of that?
I don’t know enough about the Judenrates to give an opinion on the subject. It looks like an interesting topic though, so I will read up on it.
edit: on my brief reading abotu Judenrates during wwii i get the distinct impression that these were people thrust into leadership positions that they may or may have not have wanted. They were used by the Nazis to potentially make impossible choices that hurt their fellow community members, but they had to make these choices or else their community would have suffered even more harm. They had to make “lesser of the evils” choices. I imagine these choices often made their community members dislike them, whether or not the Judenrates were making these choices with intention of doing the best they could for their people.
I’m curious where you find a connection between these WWII Judenrates and present day Israel?
Immigration is not the same as colonization. When immigrating to a location (even mass migration) the power dynamics do not allow for the migrating group to dominate the local group. Colonization is when that power dynamic is flipped.
Again power dynamics and scale are the most important factor here. If someone punches you that does not give you the right to murder their whole family. If someone peacefully barged their way into your home and you to leave what would your response be?
Yes, but why did Nazi Germany form them? What was their purpose in the machine?
I think it would be more productive for you to do a bit of reading and come back with what you think I’m getting at. I think answering that now would color the perception and make it harder to learn about a very important political concept.
we could have a big argument on the power dynamics you’re talking about, and I don’t really want to, but I will note the slew of pogroms in the middle east and ask you read about why the Bar Giora was formed. This was not a one sided affair.
and you talk about murdering whole families as if that wasn’t the intent of pogroms. Again, both perspectives need to be taken into account.
as for the stuff about the Judenrates, I don’t really want to play games with you. Tell me what your point is or drop it.