lack of criticism by omission
For one example, calling oct 7th a "natural reaction from an oppressed people" is, in essence, legitimizing Hamas
Oppressed Palestinian civilians did not organize Oct 7th, Hamas did.
Gotta strongly push back on the idea that "lack of criticism by omission" constitutes some kind of endorsement.
Personally I think it's a disappointing reflection of how insecure we all seem to have become about our own humanity that any discussion of Israeli foreign policy that isn't a glowing endorsement has to be prefaced with, "of course, what happened on October 7th was a despicable, horrible act of terrorism..." or some variation of that. Can we not just assume that everyone already believes that it was, indeed, not a nice thing to happen? (And I really don't mean that to minimise it, I just find this deliberately barbed language exhausting.)
That said - both things can be true. It can be a morally abhorrent crime and, I don't know if I want to say "natural", I'd like to maintain a little more faith in the human species than that, but definitely it wasn't an unpredictable situation and could in some sense be said to be a reaction to decades of, let's face it, oppression.
I mean, everything you said could be flipped to apply to "lack of criticism by omission" of Israel. I read the rest of your post and I see you have not exactly openly said that it's fine and understandable that Israel is just flagrantly bombing heavily populated regions into oblivion and killing 20000+ or whatever the current number is but neither have you actually condemned it. I would be happy to assume that you do, in fact, think this is not a nice thing either, but...
All violence is detestable, ignorant, often evil.
But violence is also a part of our world, a part of our species. We are a violent species. It will never stop. This world we live in will never be some eutopia. Violence, evil, and despair are just as much a part of this universe as peace, happiness and health.
I mean... this is just an obvious double standard.
If believing that Jewish people deserve a country to live in of their own, I guess I'm also a Zionist... and I'm vehemently against Abrahamic religions.
Muslims are exponentially moreso the colonialists. They took over the entire northern part of Africa, and many parts east of the Middle East.
Muslims have committed vastly more "war crimes", brutalization and oppression. Not just in the last 100 years, but in the last 2000 years.
Not all people living in Israel are Zionists.
Whole bunch of stuff to unpack here.
Palestine =/= all Muslims throughout history, why is that relevant to anything? Also colonialism is colonialism, the British also did a lot of it, I don't know where it ranks on the scale of absolute brutality, although I'd think it's gotta be near the top, but just because "other groups of people" did it doesn't mean it's fine, whether those groups are connected by nation or religion (the latter being a lot more tenuous as far as being any kind of valid argument for anything).
I'm hesitant to use the term Zionism because it seems to have a somewhat ambiguous meaning with a lot of unhelpful connotations but also I don't understand how you can say you're "against Abrahamic religions" but then say "Jews should have their whole own country", I mean, why? I'm not arguing that Israel shouldn't exist, it does, people live there, it's probably not full of Netanyahus, but isn't that kinda strange? Should we just start dividing the world up by religion, so Christians have their own country, Muslims, etc..? Yes, I know there's historical context with Jews but that is history and frankly irrelevant to the sense of having nations that are explicitly religiously delineated in the modern world. I know there are many more Islamic theocracies and I don't think they're OK either, but Judaism doesn't get to be the one special religion allowed it's whole own country which is specifically The Jewish Country.
Anyway this is all kind of an aside to the main topic because this is a specific regional conflict which really has little to do with the dominant religions of Israel and Palestine, no matter what both the Houthis, Sam Harris, and probably a bunch of other groups of people and specific individuals try to claim. The vast majority of the modern Muslim world, even in those aforementioned theocracies, is not at war with Israel and doesn't want to be, and the vast majority of Jews in the world I'm sure don't consider themselves to be part of a religious crusade against Palestine.
