"You don’t need to share your views on Gaza"

[TheWayTheLightFalls]

A) Headline is terrible b) absolutely aware of posting my opinion of someone else's opinion about everyone having too much of an opinion on things, on a chat forum which is all about sharing opinions. And I can give or take James Marriott. But, actually - I agree with this.

"One of the bleakest discoveries of the pandemic was quite how many people imagined themselves to be amateur epidemiologists brimming with compelling insights on lockdowns and vaccine science. The war in Ukraine turned the epidemiologists into experts on military hardware. The war in Gaza has bestowed an unexpected new round of degrees in Middle Eastern history."

He goes on to explicate, though I'm not sure how much of a published paywalled newspaper article I can legitimately post here.

I just wish there was more "I don't know", more "It seems like x but I can also see that it might be y, or z". More "Here's something I found but does anyone know anything about this source, is it legit?" People on this forum are literate, typically with some education behind them, demographically likely to be at or near middle age. I cannot bear the hot takes and unreferenced links from all corners of the internet. It's unhelpful and, I'd say, actually harmful - people read it and get stirred up and pushed to more extreme position taking, more black and white thinking.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/you-dont-need-to-share-your-views-on-gaza-n87dq0sj9

This thread will change nothing, of course, but if we're all sharing our opinions then this is mine.

I’d be very concerned if people didn’t think about and form opinions about all the things you mentioned, or about the current conflict. It’s the broadcasting of sometimes ill-informed opinions which I think is harmful
I disagree.
I suspect that the only reason some world leaders have started to whisper about humanitarian needs and proportionality in the conflict is because global citizens like Average Joe are expressing their horror at the situation.

If someone is being completely ignorant and hasn't got a grip on facts, they can be challenged. Suggesting they shouldn't express their opinion because you consider their stance on a moral issue to be wrong is a problem.

The danger of policing which people are allowed to express their personal views on a topic is that someone on high will start making decisions over who is censored and who isn't.

There's already a worrying number of people who seem to think that the race/religious beliefs/ethnicity of civilians makes their lives more disposable. If that's taken further into the realm of free speech and opinion policing then there's grave consequence eg. Who decides what the criteria are, only right-think allowed?

The hospital attack is a good example, yes of people posting too fast. There was a since deleted post here within minutes saying Israel kills 1000 in hospital attack. I knew it was unverified, I knew it’d be Hamas misfire- the photos even at the time were of a car park with a small crater.
Re moral virtue in posting here and on other SM too fucking right I’m going to post.
Defiantly so.
•I want Jewish posters to see the antisemitism challenged.
•I want to challenge my young relatives who have jumped on the pro Palestine/ champion the underdog bandwagon with the same lack of critical thinking as they apply to gender woo.

And it’s exactly that thinking which allowed the Nazis to rise and segregation to be approved and slavery to thrive.
We can’t not speak.
Cant edit- this doesn’t make sense without what it was responding to…

I disagree, actually! I mean: you certainly do not have to - but if you want to share your views, you are super welcome to do so!

Look, I used to work for an Israeli-owned company. I was married to a Palestinian man for over a decade. I have a degree in International Studies, a 20+ year history of personal and activist history around the conflict and the material luxury of subscriptions to a wide variety of serious news media in a variety of languages I can actually read. As such, I am not a professional expert - but I am deeply familiar not only with the history of the conflict but also its core narratives from a variety of perspectives.

As such, I find a lot of what I hear and read from people "reasonably uninformed" - that includes a lot of the opinions with whose sentiments I broadly agree on substance/sentiment (but not on correctness of detail).

But, let people share their opinions if they want, though!

There are topics of importance in which I am a lot less well versed than this one. For example, I know a lot less about global warming than I do about this. It is still a subject that I feel is important and have opinions on and will express my opinions about at times.

And not only do I think this is right - I think it may actually be important! Members of the broader public being involved in the public discourse and, directly or indirectly, in decision making - even if we may not have deep expertise - on a wide variety of topics ... we have a word for that, and that word is "democracy". Democracy is neither just "ceremonially sanctioned technocracy" (as in: the experts speak and voters endorse favoured experts), nor is it "tyranny of the majority" - at least, so-called liberal democracy is not, or at least not meant to be. Participation in public discourse on important subjects is a core component of a well-functioning democracy. And since we cannot all be experts on everything, this - by necessity - includes that of the semi- or even uninformed!

Not only does our system need to be robust enough to cope with this - it may well be less robust if it did not have to!

And it’s exactly that thinking which allowed the Nazis to rise and segregation to be approved and slavery to thrive.
We can’t not speak.

Forming your opinion on TikTok is really nothing to be proud of. It's a Chinese website with zero moderation, designed to foment discord in the West.

Suggesting they shouldn't express their opinion because you consider their stance on a moral issue to be wrong is a problem.

I don't think this reflects my stance. If someone has a knowing, educated stance on something, even I believe it to be wrong - brilliant! Share, discuss, talk to other people, let corners get rubbed off and insights shared.

I can't (and you can't, none of us can) censor others and issue licences to use the internet. But I think that on a lot of the current conflict it would be some welcome if some people thought, "You know what, last week I couldn't find Gaza on the map. Therefore I'm going to hold back from opining on Israeli missile capability / Lebanese foreign policy / the availability of solar power in Gaza". Or (easier) if people started their posts by saying, for example, "I can't say I have always understood conflict in the ME but I have family in Tel Aviv / Gaza City and the impression I get is...". Just - nuance, you know?

But I think that on a lot of the current conflict it would be some welcome if [...] for example, "I can't say I have always understood conflict in the ME but I have family in Tel Aviv / Gaza City and the impression I get is...". Just - nuance, you know?

This, I actually agree with to an extent!

But, as already stated, I think the alternative might be worse, because the alternative would arguably consist of some sort of "gatekeeping the public voicing of opinions", which I suspect is inherently damaging to our democracy.

I fully agree with "nuance would be great", though - and I find nuanced opinions, including those that I vehemently disagree with - personally a lot more helpful.

MN would be a ghost town with tumbleweed if people had to be properly qualified before voicing an opinion. Let people argue and try to fumble towards some sort of truth. Better to be curious and try to formulate a stance than to be indifferent or decide to leave it to the 'experts'.

MN would be a ghost town with tumbleweed if people had to be properly qualified before voicing an opinion.

I think this is fine when discussing in-laws, Love Island and Boden, potentially harmful with topics like this one.

I disagree OP. Conversation is part of how everybody learns, the only difference is that these conversations are now more accessible. There is a problem with how social media has been used but it’s still fairly new. All communication channels have had problems but hopefully as usage evolves these platforms will change in ways which combat disinformation.

The problem I have with his article is that it assumes the news has been impartial. Personally, I don’t think this has ever been true. News that has been seen as credible has typically been written by people who come from a particular demographic, in a very eurocentric way, that reflects core western values. Even if it doesn’t provide a moral judgement, it very often encourages one. Re, his point about debasing tragedy, personally I feel that professional publications do this too, they just attempt to be subtle about it, and that’s assuming the writer recognises it at all.

Opinion drives debate and debate has always been the cornerstone of this political system, but now the participants have diversified and suddenly opinion is bad. To me, it is very clear who benefits from this point of view.

Here’s some nuance. Until 8th October Israel/ Palestine was an imponderable to me. I didn’t feel equipped to judge. On the one hand a homeland for a people who had lost 6 million, on the other, displaced refugees, right wing Israeli heavy handed soldiers. Muslims are also more visible in London and I like their observance and my friends. I’d also bought into the be kind and am in general a big defender of faith. What that meant was that I didn’t interrogate what Hamas wants. They want to kill all Jews. All non believers. What they believe is distorted from but has its origins in the Koran and that has to be called out.

So no need for experts then?!

You do realise that what you see on TikTok doesn’t give much in the way of context or history don’t you? And without those things it’s all pretty meaningless??

We must be able to discuss, it helps us all to learn.

agree with pps, trying to silence opinions is akin to censorship, and a distraction technique.

Not sure whether it was via TikTok but the pictures of girls broken and bloodied bodies and families holding each other pleading with Hamas and explaining to one child that yes his sister was dead was unedited, from Hamas and immediate on 8th October and that’s what radicalised me. There is no context that can explain away an anally raped woman being dragged into a jeep.

This illustrates my point I think. Okay, what you say might have merit, yes you should be aware of your sources and yes context is important. However, why is a Chinese platform inherently untrustworthy?

Information filtered via Westerner does not mean it’s devoid of political considerations. For all that freedom of press is supposed to a respected concept, the US felt it was appropriate to flex it’s power and try to silence a foreign news outlet.

@MCOut

Many of the users trying to shut down debate on this thread are also spreading whataboutery on other threads and trying to shut down debate with smears and sowing propaganda and doubt against every single thing critical of the Israeli govt. So it figures they would also try to do it on this thread in whichever way suits them.

@graciousmouse could you give an example of “users trying to shut down debate on this thread” please?

I want more debate, and I hope this thread is clearly arguing for more reasoned/nuanced/researched/thought-through debate. That’s all to the good.

Children are dying in large numbers. There would be something desperately wrong with a society that thought it couldn't say that this is wrong. While it would be nice if we all researched and fought for political nuance, freedom of speech is particularly important around issues like this. Yabu.

Children are dying in large numbers. There would be something desperately wrong with a society that thought it couldn't say that this is wrong.

I agree @Uggquestion . I’m not arguing for silence/censorship. But I think it’s realistic for that kind of post/thread to be more “Reports of x killed at y. At the moment the only report is coming from Hamas itself, can anyone seen this picked up elsewhere in the media?”. I don’t think the ragey, screaming posts are helpful at all (to either “side”, though I don’t think “sides” is useful wording either!).

I saw something unironically posted from the Russian press agency, for example. The sort of person who can write a coherent post on Mn on a current political crisis can absolutely stop and question what source they are using and whether it ought to at least be pointed to as potentially unreliable.

It’s when you have to sit in a room and listen to people literally regurgitate what they read in their favourite rag that it is most flippin annoying.

@TheWayTheLightFalls the below is one example, in a roundabout way, as well as the article the OP mentions, which is clearly trying to shut down debate, guised as "helpful commentary".

jlpth · Yesterday 21:31

I'm astonished that your average person thinks that they know enough to have an opinion on this. I certainly don't know enough."

I tried not to name names, in light of MN content policies, but my answer was in part directed at PurpleChrayne's comment and other users of which there are a lot who post on multiple threads trying to shut down and derail through smears that paint things as black and white, completely wrong or completely right. I'm not saying TikTok is wholly right or wrong, but also in that by using such black and white terms to write off whole platforms or organisations, it is a smear campaign that attempts to invalidate anything from that source if you get me - this has also been directed at respectable independent bodies and charities such as the UN ("The UN should not be trusted"), Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, et al. And of course there will be some material from social media that is biased propaganda but that does not mean all of it should be swept aside with such a black and white judgement and invalidation in the name of shutting down debate and trying to justifying Israeli govt's actions (or Palestine's for that matter) when it is patently clear that a lot of it is genuine. It is ridiculous.

Hopefully people might realise why Hamas need to go on seeing this.
I personally don't need to see it since I know how evil some can be. Couldn't just take hostages had to anally rape and film first.

Absolutely agree that Hamas need to go. However it is really important to note how Netenyahu and the Israeli govt funded and propped Hamas, with the aim of preventing a two state solution:

'Keep Hamas alive and kicking'This symbiotic relationship between Netanyahu and Hamas has been remarked on for years, by both friends and enemies, hawks and doves.

Yuval Diskin, former head of Israel's Shin Bet security service, told the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth in 2013 that "if we look at it over the years, one of the main people contributing to Hamas's strengthening has been Bibi Netanyahu, since his first term as prime minister."

In August 2019, former prime minister Ehud Barak told Israeli Army Radio that Netanyahu's "strategy is to keep Hamas alive and kicking … even at the price of abandoning the citizens [of the south] … in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah."

The logic underlying this strategy, Barak said, is that "it's easier with Hamas to explain to Israelis that there is no one to sit with and no one to talk to."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/netanyahu-israel-gaza-hamas-1.7010035

This is well documented across many reliable sources.

Also, let's bear in mind that the present strategy of carpet bombing innocent civilians, collective punishment, war crimes is not an effective strategy in solving the issue of Hamas or terrorism in general.