Mostly, one side is yelling “why can’t you simply condemn X, without making excuses or adding context?”.
The other side is a mixed bag of people saying “nothing wrong about X” (which I disagree with) and “we are fine with condemning X, but the context is also important, otherwise the condemnation of X will sound like a support of Y that we also oppose” (which makes sense to me).
Specifically, the apologists:
At the University of Virginia, the chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine declared that it “unequivocally supports Palestinian liberation and the right of colonized people everywhere to resist the occupation of their land by whatever means they deem necessary.”
Their resistance must not be condemned but understood as a desperate act of self-defense.
The context-adders:
If we want to talk about justice, [if] we want to talk about human rights, [if] we want to talk about protecting civilians, then we must include the conversation around the Palestinian people, particularly in the Gaza Strip, who for decades have endured mistreatment
And the punishers of lack of outrage:
In Michigan, Rep. Shri Thanedar officially renounced his DSA membership, saying in a statement Wednesday that he won’t “associate with an organization unwilling to call out terrorism in all its forms.”
Indeed. There is a whole spectrum between being maximally outraged about X and praise of X, represented in the links. And claiming that any point on it equals praise is literally false.
Even apologists of group who did X are not necessarily praisers of this group doing X. Otherwise we will have to classify everyone who accepts the fact that Israel military is killing Palestinian civilians as a necessary evil, to be praisers of killing civilians.
Now, there definitely are some people who are praising the death of civilians. But there are a lot less of them than the author of the post states.
It is a mixed bag, quite close to “scissor statements”.
Mostly, one side is yelling “why can’t you simply condemn X, without making excuses or adding context?”.
The other side is a mixed bag of people saying “nothing wrong about X” (which I disagree with) and “we are fine with condemning X, but the context is also important, otherwise the condemnation of X will sound like a support of Y that we also oppose” (which makes sense to me).
Specifically, the apologists:
The context-adders:
And the punishers of lack of outrage:
Indeed. There is a whole spectrum between being maximally outraged about X and praise of X, represented in the links. And claiming that any point on it equals praise is literally false.
Even apologists of group who did X are not necessarily praisers of this group doing X. Otherwise we will have to classify everyone who accepts the fact that Israel military is killing Palestinian civilians as a necessary evil, to be praisers of killing civilians.
Now, there definitely are some people who are praising the death of civilians. But there are a lot less of them than the author of the post states.