(no subject)

[sigmaleph]

Imagine someone gathers a bunch of people, puts a gun to their head, and says:

"See that house over there? The people who live there stole it. We're gonna kick them out. You all hate those guys, right?" He waves his gun menacingly.

Maybe they didn't hate those guys yesterday. Maybe they'd heard about them stealing the house and thought it was wrong but didn't think breaking into their house was a great idea. Or maybe they've been meaning to kick them out all their life and were waiting for someone to organise something just like this. It doesn't matter. They go do it, maybe because they want to or maybe because there's a gun to their head, but they do it.

At first it works out, they take the house. But the people who lived there had friends, they hear about this, and say "what the fuck, the house was theirs and you're the ones stealing it", and they arrive with more guns than the first group. They kick them out. Some people get hurt. Some people die.

Forty years later, everyone agrees that the guy who went around putting guns on people's heads and telling them to do things was pretty messed up and he did all sorts of horrible things. But lots of people around town still think the house was stolen.

Sometimes people say they think maybe the house wasn't stolen. The rest of the townspeople are very mad at them; how could they ignore the tragedy of those people who got hurt or died trying to recover the house?

You're puzzled. There's no denying there was a tragedy there, but surely it was someone putting a gun to their heads and telling them to go fight some very well-armed people over the house? We've all agreed that guy was awful, right? Surely, even if the house was stolen, he shouldn't have done that, and if we really care about those people with a gun to their head, we should say "putting guns to people's heads and ordering them to do violence is wrong", not "how dare you imply the violence these people did with a gun to their head was not justified".

this is how i feel about discourse regarding the falklands war.

Comments

[nathanielbuildsatesseract]

I kinda thought this was going to be about Israel, as a jumping-off point for "historical" territorial claims in general.

[sigmaleph]

yeah, i guess if you're not in my specific cultural context it's not gonna be the first thing that comes to mind.

i have more general opinions about historical territorial claims but honestly i am not qualified to talk about israel and avoid it as much as possible