People are shaped by the conditions which they are subjected to. Currently, those conditions promote endless greed and exploitation as a way and means of life, and give out huge advantages to anyone willing and able to perpetrate them at scale.

Why even make the comparison though

I don’t know about you, but to me; kidnapping civilians that were put in the line of fire, and then being framed for their deaths (which, as the article points out, happened mostly outside of the site of the rave); is far better than “attacking a music festival and killing everyone in sight”. That, I’ll remind you, is where we started out at.

I also tend to believe that a civilian taken hostage with intent to negotiate for their release is far better than a dead civilian. I’d even venture to say it’s better than one kidnapped and held indefinitely, like the over 9,000 Palestinians held by Israel to this day.

In fact, if you’re so worried about kidnapping, you should ask Israel about the aforementioned Palestinian “prisoners” that are being held without charge or trial, routinely assaulted, and deprived of basic necessities. You know, the ones that might be freed in exchange for an Israeli captured from, say, a “music festival” that armed forces stumbled upon in the middle of a military offensive.

You must be pretty experienced with life as an armed resistance fighter inside a concentration camp, though, to so comfortably impose your own decision making on them. I suppose I can’t say what would have happened if they just went around the festival (which I can safely assume you know for a fact that both the option to do so, and the necessity to choose that option, was clear to the fighters on the ground before they ever engaged with the armed forces there) and asked nicely for their friends and family back. Maybe the ravers would have just stayed in a nice protective bubble, and Israel wouldn’t have just found another excuse to ramp up the genocide and apartheid they were already subjecting Palestinians to. Of course, the correct and moral decision is so plainly obvious! Maybe the key to peace was never to resist at all, at least for as long as the side that is happy to indiscriminately kill even their own civilians is able to put those civilians in the way of otherwise legitimate military offensives. Hm, what was that about human shields?

So anyways; sarcasm and vast exaggerations of what the article is outlining aside. If it doesn’t change things for you that hundreds of deaths (very likely the majority of those on 10/7, based on the evidence shared in the article) have been both misrepresented and wrongly attributed to the armed wing of Hamas; the only force willing and able to defend Gaza and win back what is legally their own territory; by the force that is responsible for those civilians being there in the first place, and for the order to kill any civilians in the region that might be taken hostage; in order for Israel to make those false claims, delegitimize the government in Gaza as a whole, and build a false premise for their ongoing extermination of Palestinians; then we simply aren’t going to agree here and I doubt any amount of facts or evidence would convince you of Palestine’s legitimacy.

music festival (advertised for on the web, not very secret)

Often referred to as the “Nova music festival” by Western media, the event on its official webpage actually named itself the “Supernova Sukkot Gathering.” A recent film about the event showed that it was more akin to the illegal raves often organized in secret locations in many Western countries.

Supernova was not illegal and was coordinated with the local Israeli police force (which was armed and present in advance to guard the event). But for reasons that are not entirely clear, the rave’s location was not announced until 6 October.

Participants in the high profile Israeli film We Will Dance Again confirmed that the Supernova location was kept secret from ticket holders until the last minute.

This (rather than any confusion about the days of the event or extension of the time, as is sometimes erroneously said online) explains why Hamas had no clue about the presence of the rave in the fields between Gaza and the biggest military base in the area – the regional headquarters at Re’im.

…

Israeli intelligence has concluded that the Palestinians had no prior knowledge of the rave.

decided to abandon their mission

“Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” as Hamas called it, was, by any objective military measure, a stunning success.

It was said at Israel’s military headquarters that day that “the Gaza Division was overpowered,” a high-level source present later recalled to Israeli journalists. “These words still give me the chills.”

Covered from the air by armed drones and a barrage of rockets – which opened the offensive at 6:26 am exactly – Palestinian fighters launched a lightning raid over the Gaza boundary line.

The army bases were conquered for hours. Some of the settlements still had an armed Palestinian presence two days later.

The military communications infrastructure was instantly smashed. Simultaneous attacks took place by land, air and sea.

Palestinian drones took out tanks, guard posts and watchtowers.

Caught completely unprepared, most of the soldiers manning the bases were either killed or captured and taken back to Gaza as prisoners of war. A reported 255 Israelis were captured, including soldiers and civilians. Since then, 154 of them have been released, mostly by Hamas in November’s prisoner exchange.

murder and kidnap anyone they could see there instead

The rave is often reported to be the largest single site of deaths that took place on 7 October. The UN report said that 364 out of the 3,000 total ravers were “killed either at the site, near Kibbutz Re’im or in adjacent locations.”

But a detailed breakdown of the deaths recently published by The Times of Israel (based on an Israeli TV channel’s investigation) shows that more than 60 percent of this figure actually died outside of the designated grounds of the rave.

This is important for two reasons.

Firstly, despite the fact that the film We Will Dance Again tries to paint a picture of villainous Palestinian terrorists deliberately attacking civilians, it is clear from all available evidence that the rave was not a planned target of the Hamas offensive that day.

…

Secondly, the breakdown published by The Times of Israel places the deaths of ravers outside the rave grounds as far away as Sderot (11 miles north of the Supernova site) and the Re’im military base (only 2.3 miles south)

Plotting these sites of death onto Google Earth and cross referencing them with the sites of ambushes set up by Hamas’ elite commando force – as detailed by the 7 Days investigation – shows the two often coincide.

It is therefore likely that the deaths of some of these fleeing ravers were the unintended consequences of Palestinian ambushes set up to intercept Israeli army reinforcements headed to the region.

“While many reinforcements were flowing south,” Ronen Bergman and Yoav Zitun wrote in the 7 Days investigation, Hamas’ commando force “had foreseen these reinforcements and took over the strategic junctions … where they awaited the forces … a lot of blood was shed at those junctions, both of soldiers and of civilians.”

The 7 Days piece also relates instances of Israeli soldiers rushing south to join the fight on their own initiative – including in their own civilian vehicles.

…

What is still unclear about the Supernova rave is how many of the dead were killed by Palestinians, and whether any were killed in “Hannibal” attacks by Israel.

Unlike in the more built-up areas such as the military bases and the kibbutzim – where there is clear visual evidence of bombed buildings and conclusive eyewitness accounts – the visual situation in and around the Supernova site was more chaotic.

There were few built-up structures for Israeli aircraft or tanks to explode, as they did in the settlements.

Video and other photographic evidence does show that the fields around the exit of the site next to the armed Israeli checkpoint were intensively burned and blackened.

It is unclear whether this was the result of the helicopter or tank attacks, or the result of fires which may have caught alight after Palestinian rocket-propelled grenade strikes.

What is known is that Israeli armed forces on site set up a roadblock at the main exit, causing a massive backlog of cars waiting to leave the site. Many ravers ended up fleeing on foot, east across the fields as the firefight broke out.

While the We Will Dance Again film conspicuously fails to mention the roadblock set up by Israeli forces, an early CNN report does show the roadblock on its map of the scene, and The Times of Israel report states that it was probably set up as early as 7:00 am.

Journalist William Van Wagenen has detailed in a report for The Cradle that the roadblock likely led to Israeli forces unintentionally trapping some escaping ravers in a firefight between them and Palestinian fighters advancing on the Re’im military base from the north.

I really recommend you read the article.

More than half those killed on October 7 were IDF and police, a large number of civilians killed at the concert were killed by Israeli tanks and Apache helicopter.

That’s literally what I’m saying; that first statement was purely written so that I could correct the other person’s implied rhetoric. I’ll edit it to say hundreds because you’re right that “thousands” in reference to the number of civilians that were killed on October 7 is an error on my part.

Yes.

“Hamas targeted a music festival and killed hundreds of civilians, which became reasonable justification for Israel’s extermination campaign in Gaza.”

is indeed a very different situation from:

"When Hamas targeted the largest military base in the area surrounding Gaza, civilians that shouldn’t have been there were caught in the crossfire of both Hamas fighters (ordered to take hostages) and the Israeli military (ordered to kill civilians per the Hannibal directive).

This event was used; by the very same Israel that was responsible for those civilians being there in the first place, and for the military directive to kill those civilians before they could be taken hostage; to fabricate an entirely different reality, in order to manufacture consent for an extermination campaign that was already being planned, as part of the genocide that they have been effectively been waging since the Nakba began in the 70’s."

You should just read the article I linked. It’s a great piece of journalism.

It was no “music festival”. It was a secret rave in between a military base and an open air prison. Israeli intelligence confirmed themselves that Hamas likely had no prior knowledge of it.

Source

And yet it denigrates the resistance to Israel’s crimes as terrorists, any outlet that reports on that resistance in a supportive light as untrustworthy, and neglects to hold Israel themselves to the same standard that all of that clearly demonstrates.

…and they’re right to do so? The land didn’t stop being Palestine just because a bunch of Western-backed Zionists decided to occupy it and commit genocide against the natives.

I could very easily say that Wikipedia has a long history of pro-western propaganda…

Because you know they will not stop there.

Why do you say that? Is this based in any parallel with the history leading up to the Ukraine war or just proximity?

These people seriously think Russia is some prolific yet bumbling Empire, and NATO is the only benevolent force standing in the way of global russification. No evidence or basis in reality, just vibes. I really wish I had whatever they’re smoking.

They’re literally fighting to the last soldier; and the soldiers are either kidnapped into fighting for Ukraine, or fleeing (to Russia more than anywhere else). With or without US military aid, which has been greatly reduced, that’s not a winning combination.

lol that’s not what I’m referring to. What they call themselves doesn’t matter, what matters is whether their policies/laws and/or philosophy/ideology align with neoliberal principals. In other words; we only care about the material reality of the matter. This is because Marxists follow a framework called dialectical materialism.

Words, especially those which a politician or lawmaker uses to market themselves to the public, are not material. They can’t be measured in any meaningful way and they don’t necessarily reflect reality. (You can, however, measure the material indications and effects of those words if you’re inclined to do so, but that’s besides my point.)

War is peace, apparently.

Oh you know, only the ones making the laws.

I don’t think we should waste our time trying to convince fascists of anything (most of whom are the wealthy elites we outnumber anyways), other than by carrying out the consequences of their actions. Their interests are simply not aligned with ours.

That’s okay though, because threshold number of people required to disrupt the system and make real change is much smaller than you would think. All it takes is coordination between those of us that believe in upholding the dignity of the working class, and we gain that coordination by organizing and spreading class consciousness.

The thing is that most of the everyday people in the US already agree with us. Even Republican voters. Most people believe that housing, food, and healthcare should be affordable; that there should be real solutions to homelessness and crime; even bodily autonomy (pro-choice, gender affirming care) is popular among the people. It’s just that neither party puts up real solutions, both of them make excuses for why those things are not possible, and the Republicans are really good at making up scapegoats and creating non-solutions that sound really good to someone already conditioned to accept them, which the Democrats generally play along with and split the difference rather than putting up any real challenge or counter-argument.

As for the aesthetics of socialism, even Castro eventually had to spell out that it was, in fact, socialism that was responsible for all the gains they had made since their revolution - that the bogeymen they were so afraid of were simply projections made by their former oppressors. Working class consciousness doesn’t have to be 100% before anything can ever happen. It can grow as a result of our success after the fact.

Why is that? Have you ever spent time thinking about how that would be any more or less possible under the current system than, say, seizing the wealth of billionaires and socializing it back to the working class? How would the latter ever be possible by any means short of revolution, especially now if Trump gets his way? What will you do when the ruling class doesn’t put that kind of relief on the table? How much oppression and destruction will you consent to, if you believe liberation is not possible and things can only get worse from here?

If you don’t believe in it, you won’t fight for it. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy. That’s exactly why our system does everything in its power; both to obscure revolutionary working class history, and to inflate the state’s ability to repress dissent. So I’ll repeat this until the day I die: it’s been done before under worse circumstances.

Russians and Cubans were under brutal dictatorship. Haitians were completely enslaved by one of the most powerful colonial forces in their time. Vietnamese guerillas successfully fought off invasion by the single most militaristic nation in the world, and they aren’t alone in having done so (see North Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, so on). If I could speculate, I’d say China’s political and economic situation in 1950 is a pretty reasonable outcome for the direction we’re heading now in the US. Regardless of how you feel about what came after each of these struggles, the factual reality is that these weren’t armies sponsored by any state. These were working class people fighting directly against the states that profited from their exploitation.

All of those people got organized and won liberation from their domestic oppressors, doing their part to weaken the empire, despite what would seem as insurmountable odds to a disorganized worker. It’s on us now to organize ourselves against our own oppressors, to get them off both our backs and theirs, and we can’t do that without maintaining optimism about our ability to win should we fight. We know that Fascism can only exist for so long until it cannibalizes itself. As a collective we are capable of beating it long before that comes to pass. If we allow the state to beat that optimism out of us then we are only greatly delaying our liberation and doing the ultimate disservice to our people.

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

You might feel that way, but committed ideological liberals would strongly disagree with you.

I get it. You find it comforting to believe there’s nothing you can do to change things, so you refuse to consume anything that would challenge that notion. Otherwise, you might feel obligated to do something you aren’t willing to do, like join a cause or think critically about how you might make change.

I suppose ignorance is bliss, after all, but if you did want to challenge that notion, I’m happy to share the following:

• Palestinians being able to fish in Gaza while the IOF was distracted by the Sumud flotilla.
• The global change in public sentiment regarding Palestine and its occupation by a settler-colonialist force, including 60% of Jews in the US recognizing that Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza (up from 27% in late 2023).
• International governments recognizing the state of Palestine. A move, albeit performative, indicating that governments are feeling major public pressure to act. And that was before the solidarity protests and general strikes across europe that are breaking out today.
• The successes of the BDS movement. Billions of dollars in divestments have been won from genocidal collaborators like Coca-Cola, Teva, Caterpillar, Microsoft, and countless more, even by governments and retirement indexes, along with 250+ wins in the US alone
• Spain’s announcement of a complete arms embargo against Israel, along with eight other measures against the occupation
• The success of the Mask Off Maersk campaign, a major win being the end of Maersk’s collaboration with illegal settlements in the West Bank.
• Other campaigns; like The Oakland People’s Arms Embargo, and the recently launched AIPAC Out!; uncovering Israel’s American collaborators at every level, in a way that is accessible and therefore actionable to the public.

That’s only what I could name off the top of my head

It is in this context alone that we see serious peace talks taking place, with Trump and other US negotiators getting directly involved, and Israel actually seemingly motivated to engage in negotiations on Hamas’s terms (i.e. their demands for a permanent ceasefire, unrestricted humanitarian aid, full IOF withdrawal, prisoners exchange, resisting the disarmament of their people, etc). That deal most certainly won’t be enough, but it’s a start. We both know that Israel wouldn’t even come to the table without overwhelming pressure to do so. The cracks in the empire are showing and the empire is desperate to close them, but the thing about cracks is they tend to permanently weaken the structures that stand on them.