Why do you support Palestine?

[Wildflowers99]

After the horrific kidnapping of the Bibas family and the horrific murder of the mother and her two small children, the time has come to ask British supporters of Palestine why.

A significant number of Palestinians want Sharia law. This is not a conflict of politics to them - it’s a conflict of religion. Therefore, it’s simply a case of Islam must dominate no matter what. 4 in 10 support the attacks in October 2023, which was the mass rape, torture and murder of Israelis using the most psychopathic methods imaginable - not to mention the kidnappings.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/11/amid-the-ceasefire-wrangling-how-popular-is-hamas-in-gaza-now

While I am devastated by the killing of Gazan children in air strikes, and have always supported a ceasefire, I cannot support any advancing of the Palestinian state because I do not want to further a state with views such as those above.

So, please can I ask why you support Palestine as a state? I find it painful watching people blindly marching and demanding support for a state who are opposed to everything they stand for.

I don’t. I’ve unfollowed lots of people I know for posting support for them on social media. I’d happily never talk to any of them ever again.

It's horrific, the matches need to stop. We live in an area with a large Muslim community, there are flags hanging out of windows and stickers on cars etc it's sickening.

Many people (often the usual suspects) are blindly supporting the Palestinians.

However, many people (often the usual suspects) are blindly supporting Israel.

The problem can not be reduced to one side good and one side bad.

Both sides have commited acts that are repellent.

I'm not picking a side. I just desperately wish the killing would stop.

This thread won't last long.

I support Palestine, because as an Irish person I can sympathise with an oppressed people. Because I can see how the Israeli response to the October terrorist attack was vastly disproportionate. Because I have seen an entire city be levelled on the news.

Seeing the crowds when those poor little boys bodies were released was awful. They had brought their children and were singing and dancing and treating it like a family day out. Just pure evil. I wouldn't want to live next to people who bring their children up like that. I feel sorry for everyone in Israel living next to these terrorist monsters who seem to have the support of a lot of the population. I don't really think Hamas want peace either, they seem to be very twisted individuals who take joy in inflicting pain in the most awful ways.

I'm horrified by Hamas and by the October 7th attacks on innocent Israelis. Nothing can possibly justify the murder of civilians.

However, I'm horrified, too, by Netanyahu and the actions of the Israeli state. Both before and after the 7th October massacre.

Terrible atrocities have been committed on both sides.

I don't really agree that this is a conflict about religion or creating an Islamic state. I think it's about basic rights for the Palestinian people who have been denied them for so long. It is not right that they have ended up turning to extremists to fight their cause, but it is also not surprising because the international community has done little to help them.

I believe that most ordinary Palestinians, like most ordinary Israelis, simply want to be able to live their lives in safe, secure homes, to exercise their right to self determination and to live without fear. Unfortunately, there are hate-filled extremists on either side who don't agree.

So you would support any minority ‘oppressed’ party, even if their beliefs are reprehensible and you would be actively unsafe if you had to join them?

I want to make it very clear I have always supported a ceasefire and will never ever support air strikes which kill children. But that isn’t the same as supporting a Palestinian state.

I support their right to have a homeland just as I support the right of Israelis to a have a homeland. Doesn't mean I agree with what individual people are doing, but what's your suggestion - displace them all (where?), destroy them all (really?!)

I do support the two state soution, but without either Hamas or far right Likud representing the countries, because that is not doable.
I support the two state, and therefore the creation of the sovereign country of Palestine, because I see it as the only solution to the sharing of the land and starting of normalisation and PEACE. The long evasive peace, for both sides.

Can I ask you one thing? What do you want to happen? Which solution do you favour? I have the same curiosity. Why do people oppose the two state option?

(I hope your thread does not descend into chaos!)

Do support airstrikes that kill adult civilians?

Because just giving away a people's land because it's convenient to Europeans isn't really cricket. Nor is telling people they are only entitled to their own state if they run it along the lines you dictate. In any case, I think you might find a Palestinian state far more liberal than you might think if the Palestinians themselves weren't constantly being pushed into the arms of extremists. But I grant you it makes a convenient narrative.

No. But it’s much harder to untangle which adults are threats and which aren’t. Children are always innocent.

I strongly support Israel...and after what we have seen this week, I feel even more confident I'm on the right side of history.

Now you're deliberately twisting my words. I said I can sympathise with an oppressed people. Not any sort of party. A party implies that everyone has the same ideals. The millions of women, children and a large proportion of Palestinian men do not have reprehensible beliefs. Not every Palestinian is Hamas. That is an internationally declared terrorist organisation and I completely agree with that designation. But Palestinian and is Hamas are not interchangeable and it is not acceptable to try to imply that that's the case.

So in other words, you mean yes.

This. Supporting Palestine is not the same as supporting Hamas.

I suggest you read the link I posted.

I am sympathetic to the civilians in Palestine. Over 40,000 deaths, many of which are children. I think it's awful and there's a reason that there's an international warrant out for Netanyahu. Turning off water supplies, obstructing aid, the rape of prisoners and subsequent protests by the far right for the 'right to rape' etc.

I am also sympathetic to the people of Israel that were impacted by the October 7 attacks and all that followed. I don't think I have ever read of such barbaric events. The words don't exist to appropriately describe how awful it was. Families and children taken, slaughtered, women with their breasts removed etc. Just utterly deplorable.

When people say they support Palestine I don't think they generally mean that they support the terrorist organisation Hamas. I think they mean that they want the killing to stop.

Both sides have committed atrocities against each other. I find it hard to support anyone other than the innocent civilians on both sides caught up in this.

But why would you not want to support a Palestinian state? Why do you think the Palestinian people shouldn't have the right to self determination? If it is because they are Muslim, are you wanting to see the destruction of other majority Muslim countries? All of them? I don't really understand.

If you don't want a Palestinian state, what do you think the long term solution should look like?

So explain why the deaths of Israeli children deserves disproportionately so much more airtime, anger and grief than those of Palestinian children. Is it because you know their names?
Do Israelis deserve to lose their state because they kill children too?

I support Palestine because I don’t agree with their land being stolen, and I don’t agree with the mass murder of children and innocents. In short, I don’t agree with genocide.

I don’t support Hamas.

Gut-wrenchingly sad that these two Israeli children have been murdered by terrorists.

“Conservative figures show that more than 6,000 women and 11,000 children were killed in Gaza by the Israeli military over the last 12 months.” - Oxfam.org, pub. Sept 2024.

There needs to be a two-state solution. I suspect that now Palestine has been totally decimated in the last 12 months, people are feeling more comfortable to argue that Israel should simply absorb that whole area. It’s genocide.

Btw 11,000 children killed by the Israeli military is an unimaginable horror that I cannot begin to comprehend.

Do you feel the same about the USA electing Trump or have you been railing against him on here?

I have. I fail to see how it counters anything I've said. From your own link

"Hamas has only the support of a fifth of the population – a steep decline from a March 2024 PCPSR poll that showed majority support for Hamas in Gaza"

How one can't be sympathetic too the Palestinians is beyond me. Equally how one can't be horrified by the Oct 7th attacks.
As a people neither side are evil as regime's they both are. Hamas's attack didn't come out of a vacuum.