How do you feel about financing a genocide?

I mean, if you've purchased chocolate in the last century, you're supporting slavery by your logic. Same for many other commodities, but most people know about diamonds. You could be protesting your entire life, justifiably, about many things. Most people in the world cannot consume without inadvertently causing harm and suffering somewhere in the world. It's nice that you're now thinking about it though.

Leading question.

Edit: For an actual "answer", some people are in fact taking it to the streets. For your favorite country you can search for it and if you don't want to do that here's an article for the US. While you may argue that we should've expected this, at the time of financing all we know is that there was a first strike and people were angry. Now it's different, at least in my local circle.

Either way, this should not be a question for asklemmy. It should be in the politics community or something.

Since you probably buy stuff made in China like everyone else, you tell us.

My country burns money, resources and human lives to enforce its hegemony on the other side of the planet while I only have health insurance through my crappy job and the infrastructure is crumbling everywhere. How do you think I feel?

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Keep posting of that's all you can do right now.

I feel that taking one side over the other without allowing for any nuance in that complicated clusterfuck over there is disingenuous. I feel very sorry for all civilians caught between the many murderous assholes in that region, but I can't fully support one group while completely condemning the other. Acting like it's a black and white issue is so very wrong and not helpful.

Not good. All I can do is vote. Until they take that away.

DISGUSTING.

Prime minister of my country supports Israel because “they’re allowed to defend themselves”.

What is happening now, has nothing to do with defending themselves, it’s their mission to genocide. I cannot believe the entire world is fine with it. Western but also Arabian countries unfortunately.

In my opinion, “justice” does not exist. It never did. Because it seems the law doesn’t apply to Presidents and a country that purely stands for genocide.

It's never just been the US - Israel doesn't just have a whole bunch of enablers... said enablers also back the very idea of a modern-day Israel.

France, the UK, Germany, Australia, Apartheid-era South Africa all played their part in helping with all this - I guess the fact that it's all countries with histories that are deeply entwined with white supremacism, antisemitism and colonialism is purely coincidence, eh?

I love genocide. I just wish there was some way I could actually vote for it. Instead I'm stuck voting for the closest option which does none of what I want but fortunately both sides support Israel killing Muslims in mass.

I'll put this here because people are dumb as hell /s

In the US, speaking the truth about the Israel-Palestine ::cough::Palestinian genocide::cough:: war will get you cancelled by AIPAC astroturfers and useful idiots who just cancel who they’re told to cancel. That’s how they (the AIPAC, the military industrial complex, and AIPAC-run film industry..if you don’t believe me, why was Harvey Weinstein so friendly with ex-Mossad agents that he was able to use them against his opponents?) manufacture consent among normal people these days.

Additionally, 35 US states have anti-bds laws on the books punishing US citizens that choose not to buy products from Israel. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws In many of those US states you can be fired from government jobs for refusing to buy Israeli products in your own personal life.

If my country was financing this, I would be taking the streets.

If I took to the streets over this, I would make protestors look bad because I have no experience, no social skills, no support network, and I'm a terrible rhetorician, especially when I am angry. Additionally, my family is fast to call the cops and has promised me that they would cooperate with the police if I ever got on their radar, so my presence would be a security culture issue.

Are you doing something about this?

Well, I have chosen not to work for companies that participate in such genocides, which is not a completely vacuous statement because they have sent me recruitment emails to design their fucking missiles! But frankly, I am fighting my own battles right now. I am desperately trying to find work. I am constantly fighting insurers to pay for the few times I ever muster up the courage to use my insurance. I am fighting my own goddamn family who will throw me to the fucking wolves if I can't afford the rent. I am fighting the urge to walk off into the woods and fucking die of embarrassment at having accomplished so little at my age.

So no, I'm not really doing anything. I'll cop to that. I've copped to worse, and at least for now I can live with being a hypocrite. Sorry if that's unsatisfactory.

Are you feeling unsettled? How do you feel about all this mess?

I fucking HATE America, I fucking HATE world governments, and this just adds to the list of reasons why. Unsettled doesn't even begin to cover it.

My country has been voting to condemn Israel's treatment of Palestine in the UN until 2022 but they will probably vote the same now. As far as I know my country doesn't support Israel monetarily either so I'm pretty happy.

I desire the end of America and indeed all capitalist states, ideally before they slide even further into fascism in the near future. Death to the Israeli state, and death to any states that support it.

and supported by taxpayers money;

nah our national taxes don't pay for anything, a sovereign government prints fiat money before anyone pays any tax and part of what gives that money any real value is that it's accepted as payment for debts owed to that sovereign.

Defeated and hopeless mostly. Almost the same as I felt funding the war in the middle east after looking at the casualties and reading testimonies from US soldiers. It's long weighed heavily on me that half of every dollar I'm required to pay to the government is used to kill people who have nothing to do with me, especially as someone whose worked since he was 16. The war in the middle east was met with the largest protests in US history at the time and nothing changed. We then elected a democrat who was given a noble peace prize, he kept the war going and killed many civilians with drone strikes. I don't even own a house and the rate at which my savings are stacking up, there's not much I can even afford to do. Welcome to the machine.

I don't mean to derail the conversation, but it pains me to say that Europeans have been financing the ethnic cleansing of Artsakh by buying Azerbaijani oil with almost no repercussion.

I want to finance a complete genocide of mosquitos and i'm not kidding.

Americans are the biggest donors, but Britain, Germany, and to a lesser extent Australia and Canada, and a handful of non-German EU countries also give Israel a lot of money.

It's giving me Iraq war vibes, except my friends aren't getting involved. The escalation doesn't make sense at all unless you consider Netanyahu needed to distract from his aspirations of becoming a dictator.

The only thing I'm dissatisfied with is their free hand with bombing civilians along with military targets. I can understand that Israel is angry, and rightfully so, but they fancy themselves a western country, being better than terrorist Hamas. They can't let their anger take control. Bombing civilians undermines their legitimatecy, I think they should try and be as surgical as possible, like they did in previous rounds of fighting. Other than that, I fully support their desire to root out Hamas. Though conquering Gaza only has any merit to it if they decide to stay and govern it themselves, otherwise Hamas would just rise up again.

Also please remember that Europe purchased nearly the entirety of products produced by slaves in the Americas.

If there were no European market there would have been little incentive for American slavery.

I guess the slave free northern states also purchased their fair share, but nothing compared to Europe.

I don’t like it one bit.

The government sees it as a strategic need to have a strong ally in the region. That view will not change, at least not anytime soon. The Pentagon considers it a national security issue, which puts it beyond politics. Unfortunately, I have to live with that.

I think many people in the U.S. do feel extremely shitty about it. People do care, people are upset, and many are protesting and talking and doing what they can to try to mitigate or heal or push back against the actions of their own governments in the ways that they can. I don’t know if you were around for the 2000s, but people protested then, too. It may not feel that way depending on what media you see or what people you know, but many people do strongly criticize their own government and feel awful about the way their tax dollars are used and the rhetoric that comes out of their leaders. I think most americans (offline anyway) do condemn war crimes, do feel icky about our own government’s involvement and motives, and are mourning the suffering on both sides of this conflict. If you’re seeing lots of disregard for human life around you, it might help to seek out some of the groups and voices and people who are feeling unsettled and are doing something. I know there are lots of donations happening and I’ve seen news about events mourning the dead and groups trying to help the people who are there. It might not be on every front page, but it is out there, if you look for it. The people loudly saying that death and suffering is justified for certain groups of people will try to make it seem like everybody feels that way. But in practice, that has never been true. Anyone with a heart hates this shit. So many people are trying to help. Don’t let propagandists convince you otherwise.

Germany is bound to support them no matter what. I understand why but there should be some conditions. It’s a sensitive subject here.

Beyond that I don’t really understand this conflict enough to have an objective opinion.

Similar to all other wars, shitty but numb to human greed, at times.

Best when brought up organically, but steering toward it may also happen.

Teaching/learning and talking to as many people about it IRL, while also trying and failing on the interwebs.

Call your congressperson and senators. They might not listen to just you but the more people call the more their positions can be moved.

An ongoing genocide or a genocide in hindset? And what kind? It would largely depend. Often when we give people money and they happen to use that money to pay for misdeeds, some people come back and accuse us of financing that misdeed. On the contrary, in any situation on Earth at any time, we have to be prepared for any given situation to have unconforming parts and pieces. In this situation, it's not like the government gives us a contract that says "here, sign this to show you agree to what we're going to use your taxpayer money for". If they did, I wouldn't sign, because my ethics as a relationship anarchist extend to politics, but they're not playing by relationship anarchist rules, so I become something to squeeze money out of without explanation, and it becomes less understandable how any burden is at play, especially when people start pressuring us to conform and cheat the system so-to-speak. We can try our best though.

I feel bad at all the suffering in the world. Some days are harder than others, but I'm fully aware I'm nobody. Nothing in the grand scheme and less than that in the grander scheme. My small actions have no direct effect on anything. All I can hope to do is be a positive, supportive person to those around me and make decisions on how I live my life that causes the least amount of suffering.

As an American my vote has little weight. Those that are meant to represent me are bought and paid for. The systems that provide my food, shelter, employment, medical care etc are all corrupt and alternatives promising fairer, better treatment of those involved are just different expressions of that same corruption. I'm a slave. I'm cattle. I'm not being bombed or shot at, because I exist as a resource to ensure my masters continue to gain.

My biggest complaint is that Ukraine has to be very careful about this or they would lose their support. Israel goes all out on this and the west can't give them sorry fast enough.

If you were in power in Israel, and care for its citizens, what would your steps be as reaction to what happened? Please imagine both short and long term consequences.

https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/protestors-block-downtown-seattle-streets-amid-middle-east-war/QHUUZH3QQNBL7IB7I7UPY6EKZM/

I'm not sure if it constitutes genocide yet, but it's fair to say it's going that direction. For every dead group A, group B wants to kill 10 group A people, and vice-versa. There's two ways that can stop; either they bury the hatchet or one group is entirely wiped out.

As for how I feel about my government, actually kind of hopeful. I was expecting SNAFU but it's clear the Canadian government is actually having to consider the Palestinian perspective this time around.

All the evidence so far tells me that nobody is serious about stopping the violence. The only way the violence will end in this region is if the entire region is turned into a sheet of glass.

My only interest in the region is ensuring that the violence continues, until such time as an option other than "glass them all" presents itself.

ROFL!

I'm not sure I think Israel is engaged in genocide - although I'm deeply unhappy with some of their military approaches.

Hamas, on the other hand, is unashamedly aiming at genocide. Their started aim is the death of all Jews and they are frequently heard chanting "from the river to the sea".

I don't feel that my country, America, is funding a genocide right now, though it's worth keeping in mind that America is the product of genocide against the Native American tribes and just about every nation in the modern world is the product of conquest at some point in history.

I can only remind myself of the facts:

• America did not create this conflict, nor did we add the fuel to escalate it. It is a wild stretch of a biased imagination to blame America for this.
• Land itself belongs to no race or nation. People fight to capture land and they fight to defend it from invaders.
• Israel and Palestine we're effectively crafted as nations at the same time by the British.
• The argument of "who was there first" is not only irrelevant but also complicated. It can be argued that the tribal ancestors of both Israel and Palestine have been there for thousands of years.
• Before the independent states of Israel and Palestine were created by the British, this area has been part of many large empires, including the Ottomans (Turks), the Islamic Caliphate, the Byzantine / East Roman empire, the Roman Empire, the Assyrians and the Egyptians. As such this area has been conquered and colonized by various peoples (maybe even your ancestors depending on where you're from) for almost the entirety of the Common Era.
• Palestine is a thorn in the side of Israel that they would rather not have to deal with. At the same time Israel is the target of many of its large and powerful neighbors, many of whom have not been shy to express their own genocidal ambitions.
• By the definition of genocide it's hard to call an attack on Gaza a Palestinian genocide when the West Bank is not also being attacked.

I won't pick a side between the nations of Israel and Palestine, instead I'll side with the innocent over those who would target and kill them.

The terrorist attacks orchestrated this week by Hamas and possibly funded by Iran and Russia were a sickening crime against humanity and should be easy for anybody with human decency in their heart to reject and condemn. At the same time, innocent Palestinians should not have to bear the brunt of Israeli rage or revenge. This situation has now escalated to full blown war, with rockets and missiles being thrown both ways, hundreds of people kidnapped from Israel, and hundreds of thousands soon to be displaced from their homes in Gaza with basically nowhere to run. It is a genuine humanitarian disaster. Israel has to respond to this attack, not only to at least attempt to save the hostages that were taken, but also to show strength against those that would try to attack them. There are no shortage of nations and groups in the middle east who despise Israel and want them wiped out, and now that they have shown weakness, as their most powerful and important ally America must come to their defense and aide as a deterrent to further attacks.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the oldest and most complicated wars in history. Everyone wants to boil this down to good and bad, but I hate to break it to you. There are no good guys here and there are no bad guys either. Or maybe you can argue that there are only bad guys, if that helps you sleep at night.

But in the end of the day, this shitshow of human horrors is nothing more than the culmination of thousands of years of history, politics, conquest, cold war, religion, prejudice, money and blood. This is war. Just like Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but actually with much more nuance and history behind it.

Depends on the genocide. For Isreal I'm fine with it because I think anyone would do the same in their position.