Israel (now broader Mid East discussion)

UncleTrvlingJim said
No they aren't... and that is the exact language and rhetoric that Hamas uses to justify their actions against Israel.
You don't get to slaughter children and then say you're the good guys. That should be standard. And yes that includes Hamas.

You do know we don't have to pick a side -- these are two foreign entities with non-aligned goals and interests from the United States. We are allowed to have a standard that killing non-combatants is wrong. Military occupation needs to be temporary. Terrorism is always bad. We can say that everyone in that region has a right to live free from terror and occupation with a government they believe represents them. We can hold all those standards and refuse to support anyone who isn't actively working towards those goals.

I’m for most of this. But the need to “both sides” things into oblivion feels cheap. Not trying to call you out in particular here, more just the whole narrative. It doesn’t feel right to say both sides suck when one side has killed potentially hundreds of thousands and the other - 1,200. Not that those lives matter any less - but scale matters in context.

There is no “both sides“ when there are astronomical differences between the sides — number of those slaughtered, the living conditions / economic prospects / rights of Palestinians vs Israelis…there is no comparison.

I feel so many act like regional conflicts, some with hundreds or thousands of years of complex history, are akin to board games where one side does x so the other does y and there exists no space in between to judge right and wrong.