Then arguing with people about whether the kernels popping is “justified”.
Trying to focus on the slaughter of regular Israelis and whether it’s good or evil to attack civilians is just such a ridiculous approach to me. The question has no meaning in this context. If you don’t want kernels to pop take the pot off of the flame, if you refuse to do that then shut the fuck up about it.
Like obviously it sucks that everyday people were intentionally killed but the blame is just being put on the entirely wrong place, it’s just individualist moralism that works to strip the event of any context. It feels like it’s a rhetorical funnel whose function is to push those who engage in this moralizing to the next logical point in the talking-point journey: whether Israel has a right to defend itself.
I see this from the other side, that wildly reductive takes are being intentionally utilized to dismiss flat out murder. Essentially, the message comes across as “senseless violence is only bad when it happens to me; it’s justified when I do it”.
That said, the Palestinian situation is beyond fucked. Israel is and has been committing mass violence against millions of people on an enormous scale for decades, and it isn’t shocking that that could radicalize people. The problem is that that’s exactly what Nettanyahu and his cabinet of authoritarian fuckheads want, because it gives them the narrative they need to have their genocide. There’s a reason Nettanyahu was urging people to find HAMAS (spoiler alert: it’s not that he supports Palestinian freedom). And before I get the inevitable “So what’s your solution, huh?” Well, maybe a first step could be let’s all agree that killing non-combatants is fucking wrong no matter who’s doing it. I know I’m going to get a wise-ass remark about how I just don’t understand, it’s okay when MY side murders non-combatants, what else should we be expected to do? My brother in Buddha, I don’t think deleting unarmed civilians is going to cause the collapse of the Israeli government OR HAMAS. You could always take a page from the early Russian revolution and start targeting the people actually responsible, maybe.
Are settlers not responsible for settling? This is an active process that the populace is engaging in. You can’t simply handwave culpability and place all the blame on a few leaders.