Being that the Israel/Palestine crisis has so many complexities that I don't have time to write a comprehensive essay, I'll just post the most concise thoughts at this time. For those who want to scream "what about this and what about that?", I only post in my limited free time.
Many of the overseas protesters have a limited view of the Israel/Palestine based on sources that confirm their narrative.
Many allegedly "woke" protesters seem to think Israel is one big "red state on steroids". Yes, there are some people (and communities) that fit that stereotype.
But Israel (like most countries) has areas that are more conservative and areas that are more liberal.
Much of the kibbutzes/villages/etc that were attacked by Hamas were liberal pacifist communities. Same with the festival that was attacked
Hamas KNEW THIS and attacked them because they were easy targets that were less likely to fight back.
Notice they didn't attack the more right-wing settler communities (which are truly more Islamophobic) because they're more likely to be armed and ready to shoot back.
Also notice that Hamas attacked on a holiday, when people are more likely to let their guards down.
In other words, Hamas are cowards.
Hamas also KNEW that the allegedly "woke" leftists overseas are ignorant about the many liberal pacifist communities in Israel.
Israel intelligence agencies KNEW Hamas was ready & willing to launch a massive attack from Gaza. Bibi Netanyahu KNEW this but didn't add more security near Gaza.
Why? Because I think Netanyahu WANTED the attacks to happen. He wanted the liberal pacifist villages/kibbutzes/festivals to be attacked to scare the rest of Israel into rallying around the leader (which be him) and also because he and his fellow right-wing nutcases wanted war with Palestine.
Netanyahu (like Trump) aren't overwhelmingly popular in their countries, they only win elections by small margins against a disorganized opposition.
The opposition to Netanyahu in Israel was just starting the be more organized with massive protests in the streets.
How did Netanyahu respond? By having lax security near Gaza when he knew Hamas was planning an attack.
In other words, Netanyahu was willing to allow other Jews to die, so that a now heavily traumatized nation will rally around him.
And it will allow Netanyahu to do what his supporters wanted him to do, which was to start a massive war on Palestine.
And when the bombs started dropping on Gaza (a small crowded area), it would definitely put civilians in danger. To add insult to injury, Netanyahu blocked humanitarian aid to Gaza. For this, there is massive backlash against Israel
Meanwhile, the governments of Egypt and Jordan aren't even allowing Palestinian refugees to seek refuge there. They are just as complicit as Netanyahu in harming the Palestinian people.
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As for overseas observers, while most liberals are horrified by both Netanyahu and Hamas, there is a disturbing trend on the Radical Left to make excuses for Hamas (and minimize their atrocities).
Hamas is not a progressive organization, they are ultra-conservative nutcases that want to replace Israeli oppression with Palestinian oppression.
But they fit the leftist narrative of "oppressed vs oppressors" nevermind that MUCH OF HISTORY includes revolutions that replaced one oppression with another.
The Palestinians were given their own state in Gaza in 2005, for them to do whatever they want. Hamas didn't even win a majority of the votes in 2006, they only got like 44% of the vote, but they won more votes than others. But they decided "We won this election, no more elections". So a whole generation came up and didn't get a chance to vote on whether they wanted the Hamas to continue being in power.
Hamas could've used their chance to make Gaza a shining example to the world, to make Gaza into a prosperous place like Dubai. Instead, they used Gaza to launch more attacks on Israel. Hamas has no interest in making Gaza prosperous, they're only interested in taking all of Israel/Palestine "from the river to the sea" and starting a new Holocaust/pogrom on the remaining Jews left.
But dummies overseas don't understand that Gaza was given a chance for a peaceful independence but Hamas decided otherwise.
Overseas dummies also think that Israel is a "white settler colony". While much of Western education focused on Israel as a refuge for Holocaust survivors, they left out the fact that MOST Israelis are descendants of Jewish refugees escaping persecution from Muslim-majority countries. But because most Jews in the USA are descendants of European Jews, people in the USA tend to think of Jews as "white". But the Europeans never thought of Jews as "white" and the Jews coming from the Middle East and Africa would never be seen as "white" by people who are asked "what race is that person?"
Even though I'm thousands of miles away from Israel/Palestine, and there are very few Jews or Arabs where I'm at, the few Israelis & Palestinians I did meet in real life look so much alike when they're not wearing their traditional gear. In fact, I remember subbing at one school and this one girl who identified as Palestinian looked so much like another girl from another school who identified as Jewish.
Israel/Palestine is less about "whites oppressing brown indigenous" and is more like Japan occupying Korea in the early 1900s or like the tribal rivalries turned deadly in places like Ethiopia and Rwanda. Most people from far away can't even tell those people apart but the people there can.
Hamas wasn't nice to the Asian & African migrant workers on the Israeli kibbutzes they attacked.
But allegedly "woke" dummies claim they're all about "#BlackLivesMatter" and "#StopAsian Hate"? Nonsense!
(also notice that the allegedly "woke" dummies claim to be intersectional feminists who scream "Silence is Violence", but they are silent about the misogynist violence Hamas inflicted in their attack on Israeli villages/kibbutzes/festivals/etc. )
But allegedly "woke" dummies still wanted to claim the Israel/Palestinian crisis as "white Europeans vs brown indigenous" when Jews were there before the Arabs moved in. Israel/Palestine were ruled by so many outside entities (including but not limited to the Romans, Arabs, Turks, British, etc) that much of the population has mixed over the millennia
And yes some Jews who migrated to Europe mixed with the Europeans (which was why you see some really white Jews with blond hair and blue eyes). But doesn't erase the fact that those Jews also have DNA that is common among Middle Eastern people.
Let's put it this way: Jason Momoa is indigenous to Hawaii even though he has white skin and grew up in mostly "white" Iowa. But his Native Hawaiian ancestry is legit.
The same is true for European Jews who moved to Israel, they are returning to their ancestral home, the same way Jason Momoa is returning to his ancestral home when he comes to Hawaii.
For them, moving to Israel was returning home, like they finally found a place where they can be themselves, away from the historical persecution they faced in Germany, Poland, Russia, etc.
But the problem was some Jewish fanatics wanted Israel/Palestine all to themselves and inflicted terror on the Palestinian Arab population. his happened on a massive scale in 1948, and what was called "the Nakba".
This is sort of like how the Europeans inflicted terror on Native Americans to move them out. But many European immigrants who came later (like the late 1800s, early 1900s) had NOTHING to do with the genocide of Native Americans, they just wanted to move to a place of opportunity. Same with the Latin Americans, Asians, and Middle Eastern immigrants who also came to the USA later in history.
Many of those who migrated to Israel post-1948 had nothing to do with the Nakba, just like those who migrated to the USA now had nothing to do with the genocide and slavery that had happened earlier.
In the 1960s, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) started a violent resistance to Israeli oppression of the Palestinians. They launched attacks on Israeli civilians in schools, buses, planes and much more. Their allies murdered Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich in 1972.
By the early 1990s, there was the Oslo peace treaty between Israel and the PLO. And there was the famous handshake between PLO leader Yassir Arafat and Israel Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin with then US president Bill Clinton in the background.
There was optimism in the air.
But some people didn't want peace.
Right-wing Israelis still wanted their version of "river to the sea" with all of Israel/Palestine under their control. One of them committed a mass shooting of Palestinian civilians in Hebron. Another assassinated Rabin for "being a traitor"
Meanwhile, Hamas also didn't want peace. They launched suicide/homicide bombings on Israeli cafes, parties, buses, you name it.
And with that, the dream of peace was dead!
Bibi Netanyahu took advantage of the crisis and won elections as Israeli Prime Minister. He never had an overwhelming majority, but the opposition just didn't have enough support.
It wasn't enough for Hamas to have Gaza. They wanted it all, "from the river to the sea". It wasn't enough for the Israeli right-wing nutcases to just have a few settlements in West Bank, they wanted it all "from the river to the sea".
And viewing this all from thousands of miles away, it is heartbreaking
Just recently, I was subbing at a Christian school and the students were watching a short animated video about the birth of Jesus. In that video was the message "Peace on Earth". And yet, in the part of the world, two-thousand years later, there is no peace. 😢
