As people are accurately diagnosing Israeli society as demonic and without redemptive qualities, and as they rightly wish harm on this settler, I can't help but think about how mad people here got when I said I don't care about the suffering of Americans.
Can someone explain the difference? Because it seems to me it's the classic cop/soldier distinction you see among RadLibs: they can imagine themselves being harassed and harmed by cops (in which case it's ACAB city) but are far more likely to be or know soldiers than suffer harm at their hands, so suddenly a situation that merited slogans and denunciations seconds ago deserves nuance.
People--again, rightly--point out that there are no innocent Israelis and that settlers are inherently combatants. Why doesn't this apply to the far more more murderous United States? Its foundation is even more explicitly genocidal, it has killed orders of magnitude more people, and all of its atrocities receive widespread support.
So why is the treatment so different? Is it because Israelis are faceless nobodies on the other side of the Earth, and you and everyone you care about are Americans? Is it because your state has been unimaginably more successful at its campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing, so unlike Israelis, you don't have to think about the fact that you're a settler and thus create ideological justifications for your existence?
To be clear: I'm not saying that people here don't hate the US. People here hate the US, but they hate Israelis. Why are Israelis painted as monsters complicit in their government's actions while Americans are poor little victims whomst bear no responsibility for the most murderous state on Earth?
If this doesn't apply to you: great! The next time someone tearfully says that no one should listen to me because I'm a big old meanie head toward history's most perfect angels, Americans, please join me in thinking about how much everyone hates Israelis both individually and collectively (and again: they should! This is not a defense of Israelis) and roll your eyes.
"Ten degrees to the left of center in the best of times; ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally."
Edit: to be clear, I'm talking about Euro-Americans. The material base of American society is the exploitation of everyone on Earth for the benefit of Europeans. The bottom strata of American society are almost entirely racialized, and non-white people generally experience drastically different circumstances than the parasitic European majority.
It ties into another subject I refuse to shut up about: Left-Communism, "Orthodox Marxism", Euro-Communism, and every other strain of anti-revolutionary, do-nothing jerkoff "Marxist" thought comes out of Europe. Is this because European propaganda is just so superior (no doubt due to their superior European genetics and civilization), or is it because the entire world is enslaved for the benefit of Europeans, and thus even the "Communists" Europe produces are, for the most part, parasites? I think the answer is obvious enough.
The primary contradiction in the world is between the European and everyone else on Earth, not between the European worker and his European boss fighting over the spoils of global exploitation.