> Thank you for being honest about where you get your news from (the links at the bottom of the post). This helps explain your worldview.What a weird leap to make. Nope, I just searched to find those; with a search engine.
> I would recommend trying Ground News, which helped me understand the biases within sources, and helped showed me the blindspots in news coverage that I'd missed.
I know Ground News; thanks though. I assume you're unaware how patronizing you're coming across, but trust that my media literacy is not the problem here.
Now, if you can point to where anything I said is falsifiable, great and thank you. Otherwise, maybe drop the insinuations and assumptions.
> I'd like you to cast your mind back to the acts that started these two horrendous wars - Gaza's genocidal invasion of Israeli towns where they massacred teenagers at a music festival, paraded raped women through the streets of Gaza to the cheers of onlookers, and forced young people to watch as their parents and siblings were blown up with hand grenades.
You think everything started on October 7th? ... You think there was evidence of mass rape? You have credible evidence of these young people "forced to watch"?
Do you also still believe in the 40 beheaded babies, the baby in the oven, the boobs being cut off?
... And you are out here questioning the media literacy of others? Physician, heal thyself.
> This isn't hyperbole. This isn't a politicised Western interpretation (a la "truthout.org") - this is an account of the videos shared by Hamas themselves, which were shown to Western journalists.
There is no widely verified reporting that the videos shown to journalists contain:
* Women being paraded through Gaza streets after rape
* Crowds cheering raped victims in public processions
* Families being forced to watch grenade executions of relatives
Yes, there were some videos shared by Hamas of them doing murder and other bad stuff. But that's not what you claimed.
> Hamas had to be stopped by force, and I support Israel's right to defend its own existence.
Very few people thought Israel had no right to respond to October 7th by force.
Responding with genocide? No. No they do not have the right to do that.
> If Hamas wishes to use human shields (as it has outright admitted it does), then the tragic collateral civilian deaths are the responsibility of Hamas.
A, Israel uses human shields too. They have done for years; long before October 7th. Not to mention their long history of mass rape, child abuse, torture, false flags, terrorism etc.
B, Even if human shields are used, the attacking force must still distinguish civilians from targets; avoid disproportionate harm; take precautions to minimize civilian deaths.
There's simply no way to claim that's what Israel has done and believe it without some form of lobotomy.
> And in Iran, the systematic rape and torture of young people and LGBT people. The massacre of 30,000+ peaceful protesters.
The 30,000 figure is widely disputed, and Israel have openly admitted to having had agents there stirring up that specific trouble.
And if you want to bring up systemic torture, you're going to have to explain why that's ok for the US and Israel - but not Iran. Myself, I'm consistently against torture.
> And the outright genocidal intent of its leadership ("Death to America, Death to Israel, a curse upon the Jews").
Calling it “genocidal intent” in a strict legal sense is debatable and probably overstated. However, killing tens of thousands of children and bombing entire cities into rubble; bombing 500 schools in Iran and basically every school and hospital in Gaza, etc - that's more than genocidal intent. It's genocide. So I'm very confused how you think Iran is somehow worse in this comparison.
> The Ayatollahs had to be stopped before they built nuclear weapons. There will be tragic collateral civilian deaths, but fewer in the long term than if the IRGC are allowed to continue roaming the streets unchecked.
A 40 year old claim, with absolutely no evidence. Let's try comparing that to Israel's nukes, and their 'Samson option'. Or, try comparing it to the only country ever to actually use nukes during war. Again, I just don't see how Iran comes off worse in this comparison without massive baseline racism and ignorance of history.
... There's a good chance that I'm wasting my time here, but hey - maybe some of this will stick with you. Try sourcing any of it on Ground News, if you like.