> An alternative explanation is that more people already have those views.
Treading a fine line here between Bayesian priors and stereotypes, but the worldwide Muslim/Jewish population split is something like 112:1. Obviously that's not going to be the same proportion on a given media-service, but it should still inform our expectations of what is the "default" state before theorizing about platform algorithm-tweaking or propaganda-campaigns.
This also presumes that any Muslim will be pro-Palestine and any Jewish person would be pro-Israel, a pretty strong statement given that entire communities within Israel are staunchly opposed to their ongoing actions against Hamas, which increasingly seem to be actually against Palestinian people, whom themselves also have a wide and diverse set of opinions about Hamas.
The war is shockingly unpopular on both sides of itself and seemingly the only people who are in favor of Israel's current plan of action is the Israeli government and the people who, for PR reasons, refuse to criticize Israel since Israel has done such an excellent job propagandizing people into thinking being anti-Israel in any way is synonymous with being anti-Semetic.
At least on the Israeli side, this is wrong. An enormous majority of people are convinced that the war is justified. 1200 dead; that would be the equivalent of 40,000 Americans. 240 kidnapped, with 137 still there. Hamas have proven their capabilities and determination. And then they say[1] that they intend to do it again. When someone tells you that they want you annihilated, and intend to attack you, believe them.
Even assuming that's true and 100% accurate: shitloads of Americans after we watched three thousand people die on television were convinced that the best course of action was to "liberate" Afghanistan and Iraq, yet another set of quagmire armed conflicts that accomplished exactly nothing apart from destabilizing one state, destroying another, getting tens of thousands of American service people killed, and hundreds of thousands if not millions of Arab civilians killed, not to mention the incalculable damage to the economic prospects of two large middle eastern countries, the damage to their cultures, the damage to America in particular and the West in general's perception on the global stage, and the not only NOT VANQUISHED but in fact FRESHLY RE-ARMED Taliban! The fucking people we supposedly went there to eliminate in the first damn place, are now cruising around in American Humvees and capturing our assets that were left behind after the pull out.
And we DIDN'T EVEN GET BIN LADEN THERE. We captured him years after entering the region, in PAKISTAN, a FRIENDLY state, with a single company of marines. No invasion required, no massive civilian casualties, and to my knowledge, we didn't give any terrorist groups a fresh fleet of well maintained vehicles either during that particular one.
Like, at this point, if you still believe that the answer to these terrorist organizations is force, then you really need to bring some evidence to the table, because every time we go to places we are not wanted, and inflict our will upon people who do not want us there with fire and fury, we leave a decade later with an entire city's worth of PTSD afflicted soldiers, leaving behind billions of dollars in military assets, and accomplishing exactly nothing but giving the war profiteering class a fresh infusion of cash.
Of course they're convinced. They had their 11S to convince them of attacking a dense city full of people. The fifth military budget in the world by GDP wasn't able to detect a breach in a hyper secured wall with 24/7 cameras and reacted several hours later killing a lot of his own people. We need to carefully review and research the facts because this seems a reverse false flag event. A desired event for zionists in order to justify carpet-bombing a city to kill, displace and clear the zone for future settlers.
> have a wide and diverse set of opinions about Hamas
75% of Palestinians "support the military operation carried out by the Palestinian resistance led by Hamas on October 7th." 76% have positive views of Hamas (other armed terrorist groups have even larger support).
I really wish people would stop citing pollsters with no pedigree. What is the Arab World for Research & Development? Who is funding them? Who is conducting their polls? Who staffs them? Are their results reliable?
But if you don't believe these numbers, here is one from the Washington Institute in July 2023:
"Overall, 57% of Gazans express at least a somewhat positive opinion of Hamas"
"But it is organizations like Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Lion’s Den that receive the most widespread popular support in Gaza. About three quarters of Gazans express support for both groups, including 40% who see the Lion’s Den in a “very positive” light, an attitude shared by a similar percentage of West Bank residents."
Even if these numbers are true, you have to look at them within the lens of colonial warfare. How many black South African supported the ANC against the Apartheid regime? How many Kenyans supported the Mau Mau against the British imperial army? How many Vietnamese supported the Viet Cong against the American army?
Today these are considered liberators, but during the colonial wars they were all considered terrorists who conducted inhumane acts. Perhaps people knew that but still supported their fight, simply because they considered the oppression inflected by their colonizers worth fighting against.
This times a thousand. None of this can possibly be understood even remotely well without the broader context of settler colonialism that persists to this day, as Israeli settlers continue colonizing land that is not theirs even now, today.
The amazing amount of historical revisionism where once it became so obvious and irrefutable that the causes of these various entities were, in fact, correct the entire time at which point colonial powers suddenly do an about face and call them freedom fighters instead of terrorists in genuinely nauseating. ALL groups in this vein commit various kinds of atrocities, because war, especially guerilla war, is itself largely an atrocity. And more war will only breed more of these groups as more people who do not belong in an area, do not share it's culture, and blatantly do not give a steaming shit about either of those things continue to meddle in their affairs.
Hamas will not do open battle with Israel, because of course they'd fucking lose, just like the Taliban would've to us, or the Viet Cong to us, or anyone else. They can't field an army and they know that, they aren't stupid. But what else would you have them do? Just waive the white flag and let the Western powers redraw their borders again, fuck up their cities and culture and treat them like brainless savages to avoid being killed?
What about caring for their civilians, not using them as meat shields, not using hospitals as bases, not starting rockets from civilian buildings; using the obscene amount of international aid responsible for the benefit of people, over selling it for profit in their supermarkets to fund rockets, digging up goddamn water pipes to turn into rockets, etc. Oh, also, maybe don’t shoot their own people trying to evacuate an active warzone?
Hamas is an utterly disgusting terrorist organization, this is an objective fact. Equating them to freedom fighters is just vile, and a disgrace to any decent movement that tried to overthrow their oppressors.
I'm curious what non-civilian buildings you think are in Palestine after their thorough and complete military dis-empowerment roughly since the formation of the Israeli state? Do you think this is like Command and Conquer or something where military operations are done out of clearly designated "war buildings?"
And again, as I said, even if Hamas was able to field a proper military, they would be slaughtered immediately because Israel has the full financial and tactical backing of the West. Their military is extremely akin to the United States, because we basically built it with them. That is why guerilla war exists and it's no coincidence that it came about and is used almost exclusively by colonized nations that cannot stand up to their colonizers in direct traditional combat.
And my point isn't that Hamas is akin to those other organizations, I don't know enough about this conflict to say that, and I'm guessing neither do you. What I do know is a long history littered with organizations that were, at their time, derided as terrorists and whatnot and were later vindicated when the history of the colonized people they fought for was finally allowed to be written.
> One presentation that David shared made the case that Hamas intentionally stations its military operations near civilian sites as part of its strategy of deploying “human shields.” United Nations officials have discovered Hamas rockets hidden in a vacant school in the past, and indeed, the militant group's vast, underground tunnel network endangers civilians throughout the Gaza Strip. Yet the recent IDF document uses broad categories to identify Hamas military sites and Israeli targets, including a “Hamas bank” located next to a Palestinian kindergarten.
You are repeating the talking point of the Israeli propaganda machine. These may all turn out to be true, but as of now there are no evidence for it except Israeli propaganda.
But yet even if some of these are true (say digging up waterpipes, stealing aid money for weapons) history will probably state these as part of the liberation struggle (at least among Palestinians).
IRA in Ireland and the FLN in Algeria both did stuff like that and worse for their liberation from the British and French respectively. Yet both terrorist organizations and their political arms (Sinn Féin in Ireland) had plenty public support among the colonized peoples.
If you are not suffering from colonial oppression it may be hard to understand this.
I’m sure that Palestinean that just wants to live and eat is very fkin happy about the hamas moron with a gun that tells them to go back to the place that will be bombed..
And yeah, hamas is popular with Palestineans, they are very very radicalized, which is a sad state of affairs. There are plenty of populist parties even in democracies that are popular in spite of being harmful for their citizens. People en large are not the smartest.
You are posting under an article called “The pro-Israel information war” which includes a subsection titled “‘Ridicule Works’: The Social Media War
” where you will find paragraphs such as:
> “Hamas does really good PR,” continued Schwarzbard. “We need to change the narrative.” She implored the group to use focused language. “We need people to see this isn't just a run-of-the-mill resistance, freedom fighter group. This is something equivalent of ISIS.”
You are literally playing their game. There is no evidence for the atrocities you cite. These are only anecdotes coming from the very same people who are so careless in leaking their propaganda techniques.
Put your self in the shoe of a Palestinian. Your family is dead. Your pets are dead. Your home has been bombed. You know who did these things. You know they will face no justice under the current order. Off course you support any resistance to this order, off course you support the people who are actively trying to make these offenders pay for their crimes.
There is no evidence to the atrocities? Come on, you are absolutely not engaging in good faith if you say that. There are whole telegram channels with numerous not-safe-for-life videos posted by hamas itself of their own inhumane vile acts.
Are you talking about this video [1] or the one from this post [2] or the audio recording cited in this Times of Israel article [3]?
Number [1] does not show anything, except a group of people trying to flee and then turn around after some load bangs. The bangs might as well be from unrelated firefight we don’t know. We have to believe the interpretations from the Israeli propaganda machine to conclude your claim of Hamas snipers firing at them is true. If you are a Palestinian, you are very unlikely to do that. Conveniently the IDF has a recording of a Palestinian doing exactly that [3]. However this is material recorded and distributed by IDF them self. IDF has been shown to release plenty of material of questionable origin. And if you are a Palestinian you are not going to take them at their words.
Note I’m not saying Hamas hasn’t done any atrocities, of course they have. As did FLN, IRA, Mau Mau, Viet Cong, ANC, etc. before them. However how we view these atrocities depends very much on whether you justify the colonizer or sympathize with the colonized. If you are part of the colonized and living their oppression, you are very unlikely to justify the colonial enterprise. And you are very likely to justify any actions against them, even the most horrible ones. In many cases history has joined the colonized and indeed justified the resistance.
a standard situation where the leaders of a public are dictators and control education and media access, similar to russians’ support of their own terrorist leaders
Treading a fine line here between Bayesian priors and stereotypes, but the worldwide Muslim/Jewish population split is something like 112:1. Obviously that's not going to be the same proportion on a given media-service, but it should still inform our expectations of what is the "default" state before theorizing about platform algorithm-tweaking or propaganda-campaigns.