droid

Well-known member
Like if I didn't know you Droid, I honestly probably would have glossed over the news I saw about the riots in Dublin, and wouldn't have given it a second thought. Or if I didn't have family/friends in NYC during that flooding (which I don't think was that dangerous but which may have been), I would have glossed over that too.

The closest I get to this, re: the Israel/Palestine conflict, is when I have colleagues based in or traveling through that area of the world, in which cases I just express concern for any potential difficulties they're facing, but even in those few cases none of them have been effected (or at least haven't expressed such).

If my dad moved to Israel and was there during all this, I'd feel very differently. I do think there is something universal about this sort of economy of empathy, but I do take responsibility for not willing/mustering more empathy, despite, like Gus says, there being perpetual occasion for such throughout human history.

It might be worth considering this more carefully. People talk about Srebrenica still, they talk about Rwanda, East Timor. This isn't some unpleasant local news story. It's a historically significant mass atrocity.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Something which I do appreciate being called out on, however, is making comments which, however unintentionally, contribute to the collective stress around a situation. That I think goes beyond the general detachment I'm talking about.
 

droid

Well-known member
Here I just admit ignorance and, in all likelihood, complicity to whatever extent, insofar as you don't see me revoking my citizenship or attempting some otherwise adamantly virtuous lifestyle.

I mean in reference to how this affects American attitudes, coverage etc. American wars are almost always met with a shrug (at best) by most Americans. It's the ingrained callousness of imperial citizens.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
It might be worth considering this more carefully. People talk about Srebrenica still, they talk about Rwanda, East Timor. This isn't some unpleasant local news story. It's a historically significant mass atrocity.
I think you're right, and in this sense this event is different to me, as a pretty disconnected person, in that it could constitute more of a paradigm shift in the larger world order than many of those other events, e.g. that it has shaken up a lot of the party lines / culture war dynamics here (although I could be overstating that), and could even contribute to some concatenation of events which precipitates WWIII.

So for someone as disconnected as myself, or at least for myself, the distinguishing factor of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is more of a conceptual one, i.e. empathy proper is still held at abstract bay.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
I mean in reference to how this affects American attitudes, coverage etc. American wars are almost always met with a shrug (at best) by most Americans. It's the ingrained callousness of imperial citizens.
Callousness I agree with, plus just the sheer disconnection which would, even without callousness, take exceptional levels of empathy to sustainably overcome.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Re: scale, I definitely see that the Dublin riots and NYC flooding are obviously on lower tier, those were just the examples that came to mind wherein my tendency to otherwise gloss over news of crises was overridden by my having friends/family who were impacted. Didn't mean to equate it to Israel/Palestine in terms of severity.
 

droid

Well-known member
This conflict started in 1948 with massacres and the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their own land.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Re: relevancy of this for european citizens:


Btw this conflict started with an attack on a (electronic) music festival which had it been anywhere else on the planet would have caused a much higher outrage among younger people, even in the US.
Don't make me call the Cancellation Enforcers on you.
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
This conflict started in 1948 with massacres and the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their own land.
Funny how the Irish feel emboldened to criticise those who aren't lucky enough to have dwelt unchallenged on their land for millennia. That's what I call privilege talking.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Funny how the Irish feel emboldened to criticise those who aren't lucky enough to have dwelt unchallenged on their land for millennia. That's what I call privilege talking.
You've got to be kidding. Even for you, this is a cuntishly ignorant thing to say.
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
You've got to be kidding. Even for you, this is a cuntishly ignorant thing to say.
I'll tell you what's pig ignorant of history: it's that the Ottoman Empire had Palestine for 400 years until 1917...they clearly have a better grasp of how to manage the region, so both sides should surrender...to Turkey.
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
I've found the original owners of Palestine. They haven't been seen in a while but if they come back to their gaff, and find what's happened to it, faces are gonna get chewed.

Dinosauria
Theropoda
Leptosomus macrurus
Brachiosauridae
Aves
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I've found the original owners of Palestine. They haven't been seen in a while but if they come back to their gaff, and find what's happened to it, faces are gonna get chewed.

Dinosauria
Theropoda
Leptosomus macrurus
Brachiosauridae
Aves
This is lame as fuck, even for you.
 

luka

Well-known member
There have been hundred mass-scale international tragedies the past decade. Some of them selectively arouse enormous public frenzies and some of them are completely ignored. Friends deciding to stop speaking to each other, because they've come to slightly different narrative interpretations of their social media feeds (which are hopelessly biased/propagandized) is very silly. I
why might that be?
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
There have been hundred mass-scale international tragedies the past decade. Some of them selectively arouse enormous public frenzies and some of them are completely ignored. Friends deciding to stop speaking to each other, because they've come to slightly different narrative interpretations of their social media feeds (which are hopelessly biased/propagandized) is very silly.
you're right about the weird frenzied consequences that erupt in the US with this kind of thing. it's not happening in my circles really but i noticed it more when the russia-ukraine war started. another symbolic front opening up and people who are very remote from the reality taking sides. i find it strange or at least interesting as well, as another thread of day to day life that's emerged in the last five years or whatever now that we're all partly inside the internet world all the time.

on whether the israeli attack on gaza is a uniquely bad situation i've been asking myself the same question and, really, it's hard to think of anything that's happened which is quite like it in the last 20 years or whatever. maybe the iraqi-US bombardment of mosul, and maybe the assad-russian bombardments of aleppo and homs. perhaps bakhmut recently. the difference is that it's a confined area, densely populated, there is no way for people who aren't involved in the fighting (such as children for example) to leave, and the israeli military is making essentially no effort to avoid killing civilians / is very deliberately trying to kill everyone regardless of if they're fighting or not, plus the siege. hard to think of places where such a huge number of children have been killed, such a huge number of humanitarian workers have been killed etc. i stand to be corrected but there are not other places where this has happened with the same intensity.

of course its hard to get a clear-eyed view of what's actually happening through all the discourse, and what you are mostly talking about is the discourse
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
it's also the first time i can think of where you've had a military with such sophisticated weapons and technology, really the very best i assume, go all out on trying to kill civilians in this way
 
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