I’m not making a both sides argument about history. I’m making a both sides observations about personal experience and belief. Individuals on both side have experienced things that compel them to feel justified in war at a personal psychological and biographical level. Collectively, at a sociological level too. Explanation/description and justification are not the same thing, and I am merely trying to explain that no side thinks they are the bad guys, and both sides think they have justification. If you want to explain “why” israel goes to war it’s not useful to describe them as a maniacal bond villain or one dimensional like a Marvel Villain.
I think the conflation of justification vs understanding, description, explanation, is preventing us from having meaningul discourse. When Hannah Arendt wrote “The Origins of Totalitarianism” it wasn’t a justification for the the holocaust. It was a description of the rationality that lead to the holocaust. Just because you can attempt to understand evil doesn’t mean you are promoting or justifying it. Today, merely suggesting that Israeli’s suffered and had had experienced a sense of duty to rescue hostages is somehow interpreted as an argument for genocide and will somehow cause someone to be accused of being a zionist or some other inflammatory rhetorical pejorative.
I understand what you’re saying I just don’t get the point of saying it, of course Zionists think they’re the good guys because again, colonizing relies on oppression, dispossession and dehumanization of the colonized, and consequently a feeling of superiority, otherwise the whole thing won’t work.
I’m not making a both sides argument about history. I’m making a both sides observations about personal experience and belief. Individuals on both side have experienced things that compel them to feel justified in war at a personal psychological and biographical level. Collectively, at a sociological level too. Explanation/description and justification are not the same thing, and I am merely trying to explain that no side thinks they are the bad guys, and both sides think they have justification. If you want to explain “why” israel goes to war it’s not useful to describe them as a maniacal bond villain or one dimensional like a Marvel Villain.
I think the conflation of justification vs understanding, description, explanation, is preventing us from having meaningul discourse. When Hannah Arendt wrote “The Origins of Totalitarianism” it wasn’t a justification for the the holocaust. It was a description of the rationality that lead to the holocaust. Just because you can attempt to understand evil doesn’t mean you are promoting or justifying it. Today, merely suggesting that Israeli’s suffered and had had experienced a sense of duty to rescue hostages is somehow interpreted as an argument for genocide and will somehow cause someone to be accused of being a zionist or some other inflammatory rhetorical pejorative.
I understand what you’re saying I just don’t get the point of saying it, of course Zionists think they’re the good guys because again, colonizing relies on oppression, dispossession and dehumanization of the colonized, and consequently a feeling of superiority, otherwise the whole thing won’t work.
What do you mean by “the point”? Anything that doesnt fit the preferred narrative is just not the point or arbitrary?
The star wars analogy is what I responded to. What was the point of that.