@ComeAsYouAreAsAFriend well, I haven't studied Brockenhocken-whatever-you-call-it theories, but I am a little frustrated sometimes by the international perspective because it perpetuates the instability of the region and IMO leads to an endless loop of suffering. If people want to help, blaming Israel isn’t going to do that. If it was erased tomorrow, it would not solve any problems.
The west is stuck in the sense that whilst it is not perfect, it's ideas on human rights are inherently progress for the human race, yet they persist in pussyfooting around so much with political correctness that often they betray the victims. Where are we on helping the women of Afghanistan. I weep for them.
I am even more dismayed at seeing support, even in the form of justification, for terrorism and violence in the west right now. I suppose this is easy to do when you sit from the comfort and safety of your living room in Kent, but in the real world for these people there are victims on all sides. That is not aimed at you specifically, but wow, seeing people romanticise these groups as "resistance" is quite breathtaking!
IMO westerners need to put aside their political correctness and look at the facts. You can begin to understand what "free Palestine" really should mean once you are able to get an understanding of why groups like some Palestinians respond to hardship with terrorism and murder, while others - like Ukrainians or oppressed Christians - generally do not.
It comes down to a combination of ideology, culture, leadership, foreign influence, and historical narrative. Breaking that down…
Radicalised Palestinian factions (especially Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and parts of Fatah) operate within a religious-nationalist ideology that glorifies violent "resistance", including suicide bombings and murdering civilians.
I can’t stress enough that they literally glorify murdering innocent people as if it’s a good thing. Martyrdom is institutionalised: school textbooks, songs, kids' TV shows, and sermons glorify violence from a young age.
The basis on which this is is achieved is predominantly religious but can only be done within the frame of a highly oppressed society where people cannot speak, read, think or say what they like.
Terrorists lie and manipulate their faith to fit political and ideological agendas. They frame violence as divine duty, not just political strategy, and they tell these people that killing civilians is rewarded in the afterlife. They target vulnerable minds with false promises of paradise and false ideas of right and wrong.
In actuality, Islamic scripture forbids murder and suicide. Suicide is a major sin, and there's no martyrdom attached to it in mainstream Islam.
To put that into an analogy that a Western person might easily understand, there was a time the Christian Church engaged in similar exploitation of religion to justify horrific violence and because people were told this was what God wanted, they were very easy to persuade to go and horrible murder, enslave or torture people. They were, as I recall, persuaded en masse that burning women for the imaginary crime of being a witch was perfectly normal.
Nowadays, in other cultures such as Christian, Ukrainian nationalist, or democratic resistance ideologies, that there is no eternal rewards for killing civilians and in fact doing those things is horrifically wrong – and that’s the predominant difference.
I am not a psychologist, but my life experience is that people become vulnerable to any sort of extremism when they feel desperate or lacking something. Many Muslim-majority countries are corrupt and quite brutal. There's no freedom, no trust in government, and no pathway to dignity through education or hard work in the places where extremism is most rife.
So when someone offers a pathway to glory it becomes more appealing. Of course it does.
So of course, you see a lot less radicalisation in wealthy and socially coherent Muslim countries like Dubai than you do in war-torn and deprived places like Gaza. So you have part of a point, but you are missing the bigger picture.
But that is only part of the story. As I said, many, many, many oppressed people would simply balk at the idea of suicide or murder – no matter how bad they felt their life was and the root of the issue is founded in the glorification of violence, murder and martyrdom.
They might fall into drugs, or depression or even crime - but it's highly unlikely they will bomb anyone. So there is a lot more going on that oppression.
Beyond religion being exploited, political culture, particularly in Gaza and parts of the West Bank, often encourages a world view where revenge (even horribly violent revenge targeted at totally innocent people) is noble. You see that in things like commonplace honour killings, or other extreme acts which are not culturally present everywhere.
Other oppressed peoples (like Ukrainians or Egyptian Copts) may suffer just as much - or more - but don’t raise their children to believe that stabbing civilians is glory. That is a very unique thing to my homelands!
In the aftermath of the Ukraine war you won’t see Ukrainian people – no matter how poor or oppressed - no matter how many members of their family are dead – blowing up Russian school buses. But in places such as Gaza, the culture of vengeance is celebrated - streets, schools, and stadiums are named after terrorists. It is lauded as a good thing to be.
We have seen so much in the west these last couple of years that casts Hamas or other such groups as revolutionary heroes of some kind. I can't really compute it, but certainly we have issues with profound ignorance.
Authoritarian leadership does not look after it's people or fight for their freedom. It seeks to deprive them of freedom and it uses it’s civilians as weapons.
In most countries, the main role of the government is to protect it’s civilians, but Gaza has none of that.
They don’t really do any governing or caring for their people – the UN and international community do that. Hamas and others intentionally create civilian suffering by using human shields, refusing ceasefires that could save lives, launching rockets from areas that should be sacrosanct under international law and encouraging them to both die and kill. They do that because they need suffering to sustain their rule - it keeps donor money flowing and recruits angry young men.
So here we are stuck in a loop where Palestinian terrorism is funded, trained, and encouraged by Iran, Qatar, and (historically) Syria and they use Palestinian people’s blood and suffering as a way to ideologically attack Israel to fulfil their ideological goal of Muslim domination. They use straplines like "free Palestine" but Iran is funding this. They do not have the slightest interest in freeing anyone!
They are clear on their goals: annihilation of Israel, D**h to Jews and America, and establishing an Islamic state with Iran's clerics as the head of it.
The UN and NGOs rarely hold Palestinian groups or their funders accountable. Instead they are often staffed by anti west activists and silly teenage socialists who think it's all fun and games to bring the man down. International sympathy often increases after terror attacks, as long as Palestinians suffer in the process. This perverse reward structure actually encourages violence. That in itself is so massively disturbing!
And beyond all this, what makes this specific "resistance" movement so inherently violent is it's goals. Unlike Rosa Parks who just wanted to sit on a bus and mind her own business, the goal of Hamas and other groups is erasing another country – invading a sovereign country and taking it.
And while some might think that is righteous, it cannot be done peacefully! What they are inherently doing is trying to conquer another country, and likely kill many of if not all it's citizens, so the idea that they can "peacefully" do this is outright ridiculous.
Israel will, like any other state, defend it’s existence. So when you compare this with somewhere like Ukraine, that only wants it’s territory to not be taken over by Russia or Coptic Christians who only want to live in peace you can see the basic difference in goals. If your end goal is the annihilation of another people, terrorism and violence becomes your main tool inherently.
In most places, life is sacred, but in Palestinian militant culture dying for the cause is more outwardly praised more than building a better life. That makes me personally extremely sad. When you watch the videos of the kids suferring and no question they are suffering, just remember that their leaders and possibly a notable chunk of their own population - would prefer the child was dead than to see it make peace with Israel.
This is why they dig tunnels, not infrastructure. Why they train child soldiers, not doctors. Why billions in aid vanish while kids dig rubble with bare hands. This is a fundamental ideological issue that completely prevents people from the basic pathway forward to peace and flourishing as they genuinely believe them and their kids dying horribly and/ or killing innocent people is preferable to just letting Israelis live next door.
The kids don't stand a chance because the whole thing has taken on the characteristics of a cult. Their pawns stuck inside this, and they're paying with their lives for other people's political goals: whether it's antisemites who hate Jews, or radical western socialists who want to bring down the west, or extremist Muslim clerics in Iran who want world domination. Absolutely none of those people care about Palestinian children, although all are willing to weaponize them.
I am so dismayed and angry at the UN, at Amnesty, at the BBC, at everyone playing a role in this when the only way to save Palestinian children is to teach them killing is wrong, allowing them to learn true history (not the false version they have) and encouraging them to build beautiful lives.
The world is honestly full of oppressed people. The Tibetans lost their homeland to Chinese invasion in 1950 and there has been an ongoing cultural genocide: Tibetan language, religion (Buddhism), and political identity have been brutally suppressed. But the Dalai Lama preaches nonviolence, and despite mass suffering, Tibetans haven’t formed terror cells or suicide bombing cults.
Palestine is a conduit for every rage of many people around the world. The minute they all actually start caring about Palestinians is the day we will begin putting in place tangible help that stops the cycle of violence. Then maybe we can stop feeling western guilt and instead use western privilege to materially help people around the world who remain in horrendous circumstances.